The OpenAI Atlas is more about ChatGPT than the web

OpenAI unveiled its AI browser ChatGPT Atlas during a live stream on Tuesday. There have been other AI-powered browsers like The Browser Company’s Dia, Opera’s Neon, Perplexity’s Comet, and Strawberry powered by General Catalyst. The launch of OpenAI is notable given the massive scale of reach of ChatGPT’s 800 million weekly consumers. For the company, the browser is more about maintaining ChatGPT status than making web browsing better.

Although 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 also made the browser available to all users instead of opting for an invitation system like its competitors. The basic suggestion for the browser is to think of ChatGPT as the first interaction surface for search and answers rather than Google.

All AI browsers have a similar idea about search, questions and answers. Instead of making a search query, you can type something into your address bar to get answers from an AI chatbot, instead of looking at pages of links.

OpenAI, just like other browser makers, believes Atlas will change the way you browse the web, as Sam Altman explained at the launch. “We think AI represents a once-in-a-decade opportunity to rethink what a browser is, how to use it, and how to use the web more productively. Tabs were great but there hasn’t been a lot of innovation since then,” Altman said in his opening remarks.

Technology leaders, including Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, have spoken about AI as a platform shift. However, for consumer phones and desktop operating systems, it is still the primary way to access their AI tools. OpenAI wants to own ChatGPT distribution pipelines as much as it can. Last week, we saw Meta close its doors to third-party chatbots, including ChatGPT and Perplexity on WhatsApp, which have over 3 billion monthly users. This essentially means that platform owners can stop distribution at any time.

For OpenAI, Atlas will also provide an opportunity for better deep integration of ChatGPT and other products compared to other platforms. People can refer directly to multiple websites instead of posting links to ChatGPT. The company has already used a headless browser for its proxy. With Atlas, he may have more control over the feature. It has already integrated a typing assistant that appears in text fields.

Furthermore, the company is integrating the App SDK, which lets you connect to other apps within ChatGPT, to improve discoverability.

The memory advantage is also key for ChatGPT power users. This feature takes into account your browsing history, along with your ChatGPT history, to provide answers with this context in mind. Perhaps you could ask: “What working document did you base your presentation plan on?” ChatGPT will fetch this link for you. This also means that ChatGPT gets more context about you while you spend more time in the browser. OpenAI can use this context and provide it to other applications when login with ChatGPT begins to be widely rolled out.

ChatGPT as a default option in the address bar and the memory feature are both designed to provide more data to OpenAI, so it has more context about you and, therefore, can offer you better products. The browser does not have an ad blocker, VPN, reading mode, or translation feature to make your browsing experience better for a site. Instead, I should ask ChatGPT to summarize the content or find something on the page. It’s as if opening the page is designed to give ChatGPT more context instead of making me consume the content on the page.

In contrast, Arc from The Browser Company had some useful ideas about revamping the browser experience, such as using AI to rename downloaded files or personalizing a webpage by letting you remove items.

The result is more than just a browser. It’s a broader palette than ChatGPT itself. Fidji Simo, chief applications officer at OpenAI, presented this idea in her blog explaining the launch of Atlas.

“When we first launched ChatGPT, we weren’t sure how people would use it,” Simo said. “Now that we’ve gotten feedback and signals from hundreds of millions of people around the world, it’s clear that ChatGPT needs to become much more than the simple chatbot it started out with. Over time, we see ChatGPT evolving into the operating system for your life: a fully connected hub that helps you manage… day and achieve your long-term goals.

The big question for OpenAI is to get people, whose default browser is Chrome, Safari or Edge, to switch to their own browser and take some market share out of the hands of Google, Apple and Microsoft. OpenAI is seeing steady growth in the number of people using ChatGPT. But it’s not clear whether the average user wants to blend the browser and chatbot experience yet. Chrome succeeded because it was fast, and people wanted to use Google queries as their default starting Internet experience. ChatGPT Atlas is perfect for users who have replaced Google with ChatGPT, but to replace Chrome, OpenAI needs to make sure billions of users fall into the habit.