Browser with built-in ChatGPT is ending! But OpenAI Atlas is set to find use elsewhere

Last year, it looked like a browser war was about to ignite and Chrome would finally take a serious hit. OpenAI then launched Atlas, a browser with ChatGPT at its core. But after less than a year, it’s shutting it down — and the way it’s doing it is actually an honest admission of defeat. Although not entirely as it might seem.

Browser is a feature, not a goal

After a few months of experimentation, OpenAI came to a conclusion that seems quite apt to me: a browser is not a destination, but just one of many features. Instead of luring people into a new application, it’s moving Atlas’s capabilities to where users already are. This will result in a ChatGPT extension for Chrome, which can see page content, summarize it, answer questions about it, and initiate longer tasks. Yes, it’s a direct competitor to Google’s Gemini Side Panel — and also a nice irony, because the company that wanted to dethrone Chrome is now entering it as a plugin.

An agent that opens a page for you

The second part of the shift is heading to the ChatGPT desktop app. It’s getting a more fully-featured built-in browser where you can surf, log into accounts, download files, and interact with pages without leaving ChatGPT. In addition, a cloud browser running remotely on OpenAI’s servers will be added — there, agents are meant to complete tasks for you. Together, ChatGPT is transforming into a continuous work environment spread across Chrome, your computer, and the cloud.

Cutting “side quests”

Moreover, the end of Atlas didn’t come out of the blue. Head of Apps Fidji Simo recently ordered the team to cut down on so-called “side quests” — and the first casualty of this cleanup was the video generation tool Sora. Atlas is thus the second in line. The browser battle continues even without OpenAI: Perplexity has Comet, The Browser Company offers Dia, and Google and Microsoft are pushing AI directly into Chrome and Edge. However, it seems that a browser built around a chatbot itself hasn’t convinced anyone.

Would you try a browser built around AI, or is a Chrome extension enough for you?

Source: TechCrunch, OpenAI