OpenAI launched its own web browser called Atlas, hoping to use its artificial intelligence superpowers to take away market share from Google, which has dominated the browser and search markets for decades.
“AI represents a rare once-in-a-decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be about,” Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, said during the launch of Atlas. “Tabs were great, but we haven’t seen a lot of innovation since then.”
With ChatGPT at its core, users can use Atlas to chat with a website, find products and ask it to do things on behalf of users, such as booking appointments or planing events, while continuing to browse.
Whereas yesteryear web browsers accessed the internet through a URL and search box, future internet access will be through the chat experience and a web browser, Altman said.
With the launch of Atlas, OpenAI isn’t just looking to dethrone Google Chrome as the default browser: It also wants ChatGPT to be the default operating system for the AI age.
Google has a clear head start, owning the entire technology infrastructure, including its own AI chips (called Tensor Processing Units) and its Gemini chatbot. And it commands a 90% search market share.
OpenAI has amassed 800 million weekly users on ChatGPT since its launch in 2022 and is using that reach as leverage to get developers to build apps within ChatGPT, enabling users and AI agents to shop from within the app. The company is also co-designing its own AI chips that are tailored for ChatGPT.
OpenAI has received the backing of Nvidia, which promised to invest $100 billion into the company in the coming years.
Atlas still faces an uphill battle against Chrome, which has 3.45 billion global users.
ChatGPT Atlas has the typical browser features, such as tabs, bookmarks, and remembering passwords. But instead of a search bar, the home page of Atlas browser opens up a ChatGPT chat box.
The ongoing chat follows users as they navigate the web and can be invoked at will. The browser’s memory features remember all the actions the user takes.
“If you turn on browser memories, ChatGPT will remember key details from content you browse to improve chat responses and offer smarter suggestions — like creating a to-do list from your recent activity or continuing to research holiday gifts based on products you’ve viewed,” the company said in a blog post.
Atlas’ agent mode does things on users’ behalf, such as finding a grocery store, adding ingredients to a card, and ordering them, just based on a recipe shared by a user. Users can also plan events, book appointments and automate research in agent mode, which is available for Plus, Pro and Business users.
In September, a federal court ruled that Google had maintained an illegal monopoly in search and advertising, but did not require the company to sell Chrome, as was originally requested when the suit was brought.
During the course of the proceedings, OpenAI expressed interest in acquiring Chrome. Another browser competitor, Perplexity AI, also placed a failed $34.5-billion bid to acquire Chrome, weeks after launching Comet, an AI-powered browser.
In the late ‘90s, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer prevailed in the fight against Netscape Navigator to become the default browser in the personal computing era.
In the aughts, Google Chrome’s rise on the back of smartphone adoption replaced Internet Explorer as the default browser. And now ChatGPT Atlas might be the beginning of the third chapter of the browser wars.
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