OpenAI unveiled its AI browser, ChatGPT Atlas, during a livestream on Tuesday. There are other AI browsers such as Browser Company’s Dia, Opera’s Neon, Perplexity’s Comet, and General Catalyst-supported strawberryOpenAI’s launch is notable due to its sheer scale with its weekly ChatGPAT users potentially reaching 800 million. For the company, the browser is more about keeping ChatGPT central than improving web browsing.
While Atlas is currently only available on Mac, the company is already working on bringing it to Windows, iOS, and Android – all surfaces where ChatGPT already exists. OpenAI has made the browser available to all users instead of opting for an invitation system like its rivals. The main proposition of the browser is that you think of ChatGPT as your first interaction surface for searches and answers, rather than Google.
All AI browsers share similar ideas about search and Q&A. Instead of performing a search query, you’ll type something into your address bar to get answers from an AI chatbot, rather than viewing pages of links.
And OpenAI, like other browser makers, thinks Atlas will change the way you browse the web, as Sam Altman made clear at the launch. “We think AI provides a once-in-a-decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be, how to use it, and how to use the Web in the most productive way. Tabs were great but there hasn’t been a lot of innovation since then,” Altman said in his inaugural address.
Technical leaders also included Sundar Pichai And Satya Nadella, Have talked about AI as a platform shift. However, for consumers, phones and desktop operating systems are still the primary way to access their AI tools. OpenAI wants to own as much of ChatGPT’s delivery pipes as possible. Last week, Meta closed its doors to third-party chatbots on WhatsApp, including ChatGPT and Perplexity, which have over 3 billion monthly users. This essentially means that platform owners can put the brakes on distribution at any time.
For OpenAI, Atlas will also provide the opportunity to integrate ChatGPT and other products better than other platforms. Users can reference many websites directly instead of posting links on ChatGPTT. The company already uses headless browsers for its agents. With Atlas, one can have more control over features. It already has integrated a hovering writing assistant that appears in text fields.
Additionally, the company is working on integrating its app SDK, which lets you call other apps within ChatGPT, to improve search capabilities.
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The memory feature is also important for power users of ChatGPT. This feature takes into account your ChatGPT history as well as browsing history to provide answers keeping that context in mind. You may ask, “What was the working document that had my presentation planned?” And ChatGPT will bring that link for you. This also means that as you spend more time in the browser, ChatGPT gets more context about you. OpenAI can use this context and provide it to other apps when it starts widely signing with ChatGPT.
Both features – making ChatGPT the default search option and enabling memory – are designed to gather more user data, give OpenAI more insight into user behavior and enable better product development. The browser does not have an ad-blocker, VPN, reading mode, or translation feature to improve the browsing experience of a site. Instead, users must ask ChatGPT to summarize content or find something on a page – such as opening a page designed to give ChatGPT more context rather than helping users consume content on the page.
By contrast, browser company Arc has some useful ideas for revamping the browser experience, like using AI to rename downloaded files or customizing a web page by allowing elements to be removed.
The result is much more than a browser; This is a broader canvas for ChatGPT. Fidji Simo, CEO of OpenAI’s Applications, put forward this idea. his blog Atlas launch outline.
“When we first released ChatGPT, we weren’t sure how people would use it. Now that we have feedback and signals from millions of people around the world, it’s clear that ChatGPT needs to become much more than the simple chatbot that it started out as. Over time, we see ChatGPT evolving to become the operating system for your life: a fully connected hub that lets you manage your day and manage your Helps achieve long-term goals,” Simo Said,
The big question for OpenAI is how to make people whose default browser is Chrome, Safari, or Edge switch to their own browser and wrest some market share from the hands of Google, Apple, and Microsoft. OpenAI is seeing a steady increase in the number of people using ChatGPT. But it’s not yet clear whether an average user would want to mix their browser and chatbot experience. Chrome became successful because it was fast, and people wanted to use Google queries as their default starting experience of the Internet. ChatGPT Atlas is perfect for users who have replaced Google with ChatGPT, but to replace Chrome, OpenAI will have to make sure billions of users get into that habit.
