OpenAI unveiled its AI browser ChatGPT Atlas during a livestream on Tuesday. There have been other AI browsers such as The Browser Company’s Dia, Opera’s Neon, Perplexity’s Comet, and General Catalyst-backed Strawberry. OpenAI’s launch is notable because of the sheer scale of reaching potentially 800 million of its weekly ChatGPT consumers. For the company, the browser is much more about keeping ChatGPT central than making web browsing better.
While Atlas is currently available only on the Mac, the company is already working on bringing it to Windows, iOS, and Android — all the surfaces where ChatGPT already exists. OpenAI has also made the browser available to all users instead of opting for an invite system like its rivals. The core proposition of the browser is for you to think of ChatGPT as the first interaction surface for search and answers instead of Google.
All the AI browsers have a similar idea about search and Q&A. Instead of performing a search query, you would type something in your address bar in order to get answers from an AI chatbot, instead of looking at pages of links.
And OpenAI, just like other browser makers, think that Atlas will change the way you browse the web, as Sam Altman made clear at the launch. “We think AI represents once in a decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be, how to use one, and how to most productively use the web. Tabs were great but there hasn’t been a lot of innovation since then,” Altman said in his opening speech.
Tech leaders, including Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, have talked about AI as a platform shift. However, for consumer phones and desktop operating systems are still the primary way to get to their AI tools. OpenAI wants to own the pipes of distribution of ChatGPT as much as it can. Last week, we saw Meta shut their doors to third-party chatbots, including ChatGPT and Perplexity on WhatsApp, which has over 3 billion monthly users. This essentially means that the platform owners could put the brake on distribution at any point in time.
For OpenAI, Atlas will also present an opportunity to deeply integrate ChatGPT and other products better as compared to other platforms. People can directly reference multiple websites instead of posting links to ChatGPT. The company already used a headless browser for its agent. With Atlas, it might have more control over the feature. It has already integrated a writing assistant hover that shows up in text fields.
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What’s more, the company is working on integrating its App SDK, which lets you call other apps within ChatGPT, to improve discoverability.
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