OpenAI unveils its Atlas internet browser in a bid to supplant Google because the web’s common place to begin

ChatGPT Atlas, as the brand new browser is known as, seems and works very similar to a regular internet browser however infuses generative AI capabilities all through the expertise, placing ChatGPT entrance and heart for every thing from web search and e-commerce buying to electronic mail.

“The browser is already where a ton of work and life happens,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mentioned in a livestream announcement and demo of the brand new browser on Tuesday. “We think that by having ChatGPT be a core way to use that… we can take this pretty far.”

Shares of Alphabet, whose Chrome product is the world’s hottest internet browser, fell 3.6% on the information, earlier than recovering some floor and ending the common buying and selling session down 2.2% at $251.34. Shares of Apple and Microsoft, every of which additionally make standard internet browsers, completed Tuesday’s session basically flat.

OpenAI, which is valued at $500 billion, began the generative AI increase with the discharge of ChatGPT in November 2022. Since then, a wave of well-capitalized firms, from Meta, Alphabet’s Google, and Microsoft, in addition to startups like Anthropic, have invested aggressively in their very own competing giant language fashions and AI chatbots.

OpenAI made Atlas obtainable for computer systems operating the Mac working system on Tuesday, and mentioned it deliberate to introduce variations for Windows PCs and for cellular units sooner or later.

ChatGPT Atlas represents a menace to Google not solely as an internet browser, however as a possible various to Google’s search engine. The Atlas browser “home page” seems much like the Google search dwelling web page, besides that the field on the heart of the white web page is for interacting with the ChatGPT AI bot relatively than the Google search engine. The ChatGPT field serves as each a conventional chatbot that customers can discuss to, a search engine, and because the browser’s deal with field, through which customers sort URL of the online web page they want to go to.

A handful of hyperlinks straight beneath the ChatGPT search field listing numerous matters, like trending information gadgets, customized in accordance with the person’s shopping historical past and pursuits.

OpenAI livestream

Among the options in Atlas browser is an Ask GPT button; customers can click on it and ask the AI bot for extra info or insights relative to no matter internet web page they’re visiting. (In one instance the corporate confirmed within the demo, a person may flip to the bot for recommendation about whether or not a pair of trainers on a buying website could be applicable for a marathon.) A “memory” function lets customers retrieve a previous internet web page by describing what the web page was about.

The Atlas browser may even make it simple for customers to arrange “agents” that perform duties on their behalf, corresponding to ordering the substances for a cooking recipe. OpenAI mentioned the agent function will initially be obtainable solely to paying clients of the ChatGPT Plus and Pro variations.

OpenA is one in every of a number of firms that has set its sights on the internet browser—one of many oldest and most staid web merchandise—within the hopes of upending the established order and probably rekindling the famed browser wars of the early web period. San Francisco-based startup Perplexity launched its Comet AI internet browser in July, and Opera, one of many pioneers of internet browsers from the dotcom days, not too long ago rolled out the AI-infused Neon browser.

OpenAI’s Altman mentioned Tuesday that internet browsers had not seen important innovation because the introduction of tabs, a function that dates again to the early 2000s.

During the demo on Tuesday, OpenAI staffers acknowledged the safety dangers that include new options corresponding to “agentic” capabilities, which basically hand over management of the browser to ChatGPT. OpenAI mentioned it had inbuilt numerous safeguards, together with the power to make use of the browser with out letting the agent be logged in, and famous that the ChatGPT agent can solely entry knowledge inside the browser, not recordsdata on a person’s PC.

Still some commentators expressed wariness over the potential safety and privateness implications following the Atlas launch. “The security and privacy risks involved here still feel insurmountably high to me – I certainly won’t be trusting any of these products until a bunch of security researchers have given them a very thorough beating,” wrote Simon Willison, an open supply developer who publishes a well-liked weblog about tech and AI.

For a better look at how AI-powered instruments have revived the “browser wars,” learn this current Fortune deep dive.

Update: This story has been up to date to incorporate extra particulars from the launch.