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OpenAI, on Tuesday, October 21, introduced ChatGPT Atlas – its new browser designed around conversational AI. The browser integrates ChatGPT as its core interface for navigating and interacting with the web.
The company described Atlas as a “browser for the next era of the web,” offering a cleaner, more interactive experience where users can chat directly with webpages, perform searches, and even delegate online tasks to an AI agent.
Atlas is available starting today for macOS users, with plans to expand to Windows and mobile platforms soon. The agent feature will initially be limited to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the goal is to make browsing more personal and productive, as ChatGPT learns from user preferences and “proactively finds things you might want on the internet.”
According to OpenAI’s engineering lead Ben Goodger, Atlas was built on the idea of “chatting with your browser.”
Unlike traditional browsers with separate search boxes and tabs, Atlas places ChatGPT at the center of the experience. Users can ask questions, browse sites, or reference bookmarks in their natural language. The interface supports the usual browser functions such as tabs, bookmarks, and autofill. However, it distinguishes itself with three key features: chat anywhere on the web, browser memory for personalisation, and agent mode for task automation.
Open sidebar to summon ChatGPT
During the demo, OpenAI’s team showcased how users can open a sidebar to converse with ChatGPT while viewing any webpage. For instance, a developer could ask ChatGPT to summarise code changes on GitHub or refine the wording of an email directly within Gmail. The browser’s memory feature lets it to recall past interactions, offering personalised suggestions or retrieving previously viewed documents.
However, the highlight of the presentation was Agent Mode, which allows ChatGPT to take actions inside the browser such as filling forms, adding tasks to project management tools, or ordering groceries online. The feature allows users to approve or monitor actions, ensuring transparency and safety.
OpenAI said the agent operates only within browser tabs, without access to users’ local files, and memory settings can be managed or turned off entirely. The AI agent emphasised that Atlas remains in its early stages but marks a significant step toward integrating conversational AI into everyday web experiences.
Why does it matter?
With its new Atlas browser, OpenAI is landing in a crowded ‘AI browser’ moment. In the past few weeks, Perplexity announced that it was taking Comet, its AI browser, from a limited waitlist to a free global release. Comet is built around an agentic, answer-first browsing experience. Subsequently, Mozilla added Perplexity as a search option in Firefox.
On the other hand, Google integrated Gemini deeper into Chrome to work across tabs and do page-aware tasks and Microsoft has been working towards turning Edge/Windows into an ‘agentic’ environment with Copilot that can act for the user. At the same time, Opera keeps pushing its Aria side panel, and Brave browser has been pushing its Leo browser boasting its privacy-preserving page summaries and multi-tab context.
If you ask why all this matters, one should understand that a browser is still the gateway to search, shopping, and service. This means whoever controls the assistant inside it can direct the user intent, data, and monetisation efforts.
In essence, OpenAI browser would challenge Google and Microsoft’s distribution moats by putting out a model-native agent for activities like navigation, form-filling, and not function merely as a chat tab. Now, this intensifies the browser war from page rendering to task completion, as OpenAI has taken a major leap.
