OpenAI unveils its Atlas web browser in an effort to replace Google as the universal starting point of the Internet | Luck

ChatGPT Atlas, as the new browser is called, looks and works much like a standard web browser, but infuses the generative capabilities of artificial intelligence into the entire experience, putting ChatGPT at the forefront of everything from Internet search and e-shop shopping to email.

“The browser is already where a lot of work and life happens,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Tuesday in a livestream and preview of the new browser. “We think that by having ChatGPT as a core way to leverage that… we can take it pretty far.”

Shares of Alphabet, whose Chrome product is the world’s most popular web browser, fell 3.6% on the news before recovering a bit to finish the regular session up 2.2% at $251.34. Shares of Apple and Microsoft, which each also make popular web browsers, ended the session essentially flat on Tuesday.

OpenAI, which is valued at $500 billion, started the generative AI boom with the release of ChatGPT in November 2022. Since then, a wave of well-capitalized companies from Meta, Alphabet’s Google, and Microsoft, as well as startups like Anthropic, have aggressively invested in their own competing large language models and AI chatbots.

OpenAI made Atlas available for Mac computers on Tuesday and said it plans to roll out versions for Windows computers and mobile devices in the future.

ChatGPT Atlas poses a threat to Google not only as a web browser, but as a potential alternative to Google’s search engine. The Atlas browser’s “home page” looks similar to the Google search home page, except that the box in the middle of the white page is used to interact with the ChatGPT AI bot rather than the Google search engine. The ChatGPT field serves as both a traditional chatbot that users can talk to, a search engine, and a browser address field where users enter the URL of the website they want to visit.

Several links directly below the ChatGPT search box list various topics, such as trending news, tailored to the user’s history and interests.

Features in the Atlas browser include an Ask GPT button; users can click on it to ask the AI ​​bot for more information or insights about any website they visit. (In one example the company showed in a demo, a user could ask the bot for advice on whether a pair of running shoes on a shopping website would be suitable for a marathon.) The “memory” feature allows users to retrieve a past web page by describing what the page was about.

The Atlas browser will also make it easy for users to set up “agents” to perform tasks for them, such as ordering ingredients for a cooking recipe. OpenAI said the agent feature will initially only be available to paying customers of ChatGPT Plus and Pro versions.

OpenA is one of several companies that have targeted the web browser — one of the Internet’s oldest and most stable products — in hopes of redressing the status quo and potentially reigniting the famous browser wars of the early Internet era. San Francisco-based startup Perplexity launched its Comet AI web browser in July, and Opera, one of the pioneers of web browsers from the dotcom era, recently launched the AI-filled Neon browser.

OpenAI’s Altman said Tuesday that web browsers haven’t seen significant innovation since the introduction of tabs, a feature that dates back to the early 2000s.

During a demo on Tuesday, OpenAI staff acknowledged the security risks that come with new features, such as “agent” capabilities that essentially hand over control of the browser to ChatGPT. OpenAI said it has various safeguards built in, including the ability to use the browser without an agent login, and noted that the ChatGPT agent only has access to data in the browser, not files on the user’s computer.

Still, some commentators have expressed wariness about the potential security and privacy impacts following the launch of Atlas. “The security and privacy risks involved still seem insurmountably high to me – I certainly won’t trust any of these products until a group of security researchers take a good beating,” wrote Simon Willison, an open source developer who publishes a popular tech and AI blog.

For a closer look on how AI-powered tools have revived the “browser wars,” read this recent Fortune deep dive.

Update: This story has been updated to include additional details from the launch.