Who are AI browsers used for?

OpenAI launched an AI-powered web browser called ChatGPT Atlas this week, which makes me wonder: Is it finally time to ditch Safari?

That news was on our minds when Max Ziff, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed the browser landscape — including some lesser-known alternatives — on the latest episode of the Equity podcast. But it doesn’t look like any of us are going to make a big change anytime soon.

For one thing, Sean pointed out that many companies have tried and ultimately failed to kill major browsers due to their inability to make money from the browser alone. Of course, this is unlikely to be a problem for OpenAI, with its increasingly large funding rounds.

Meanwhile, Max has already tried Atlas and other browsers that promise AI agents will do the work for you, and he said there are “minor efficiency gains” at best. Other times, you end up watching the agent “click through to a website” – is this something regular users really scream about? In addition, there are significant security risks.

Read a preview of our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Anthony: I’m still using Safari, but as far as the browser-related search engine goes, I’ve been really trying out non-Google uses [options] Because I’m tired of seeing all the genAI stuff at the top of my search results.

I think there’s also a question: If these AI browsers take off, what does that mean for the idea of ​​the open web in general? You can still navigate to web pages, but I don’t think it would be crazy to suggest that the website will become less important as our browsing becomes increasingly controlled by AI interfaces and chatbots.

Top: I think that’s been a big idea that people talk about a lot: What does a dealer network look like? I think it’s a great question. People have tried to come up with all these solutions to work towards this future [they] Feel it coming.

And I think there’s a certain aspect of it that reminds me of previous waves of technology where it’s like, “Okay, but what is the actual experience? What’s the value proposition to the consumer of using one of these tools?”

It is not very convincing today. I’ve tried ChatGPT Atlas and I’ve tried Comet and the most generous estimate is that it’s a slight increase in efficiency. Makes you a little more efficient.

But most of the times I’ve tried these things, you’re slowly watching them click through to a website, doing some task I’d probably never do in the real world. I would look up a recipe and add all the ingredients to Instacart. I’ve never done that. I think all our tech brethren always say this example in videos, and I say, “I don’t know if people do that often.”

This is just a huge gap facing the tech industry right now [saying]”We’re building all these tools for the proxy web,” but why would the average person use this? And I don’t know.

Shawn: I haven’t used any of those [AI browsers] But that’s in large part because I’m still pretty much an expert when it comes to searching and browsing in general — a lot of the work I do involves searching for documents, which naturally involves searching through various discrete parts of web pages I’m familiar with, and a lot of Boolean Google searches. Maybe I’ll try these things one day if Google actually kills Boolean search, which seems like it’s coming at some point, but it’s not there yet.

The interesting thing to me about these AI browsers is that we’ve seen other companies try to compete in the browser space and always lose because it’s impossible to make money on the browser as a product. Some have tried charging upfront for this, and they can afford it for a while, but it’s ultimately unsustainable in the face of competing against Safari, Chrome, or Firefox, for that matter.

What’s interesting to me… is that you finally have these companies that have infinite money, so they can keep it going as long as they want to, because they’re not actually trying to make money off of this stuff yet. They probably will eventually, but OpenAI doesn’t need to make money on this thing in the next year or two, they can just roll it out and let it take shape.