OpenAI announced the launch of its AI-powered ChatGPT Atlas browser on Tuesday, marking a major step in the company’s push to displace Google as the main way to find information on the Internet.
The company says Atlas will launch on macOS first, with support for Windows, iOS and Android coming soon. OpenAI says the product will be available to all free users at launch.
Browsers have quickly become the next battleground in the AI industry. While Google Chrome has long dominated this space, there is a feeling that chatbots and artificial intelligence agents are fundamentally changing the way people do work online. Several startups have tried to capture this by launching their own AI-powered browsers, such as Perplexity’s Comet and The Browser Company’s Dia. Google and Microsoft have also tried to update Chrome and Edge, respectively, with AI-powered features to differentiate their older products.
Ben Goodger, OpenAI engineering lead at Atlas, said during Tuesday’s livestream that ChatGPT is at the core of the company’s first browser. ChatGPT Atlas users can chat with search results just like in Perplexity Mode or Google AI Mode.
The killer feature in other AI-enabled browsers is the built-in chatbot, which sits in the sidebar and automatically provides context for everything that’s on the screen. This may sound petty, but many users spend all day copying and pasting text or dragging files and links into ChatGPT to provide context. The sidecar feature eliminates this friction and provides smoother operation.
OpenAI product manager Adam Fry said during the livestream that ChatGPT Atlas will also have a sidecar feature. What’s more, ChatGPT Atlas has “browser history”, which means ChatGPT can now record the websites you visit and what you do on them, and then exploit that information for more personalized responses.
AI-enabled browsers often include an AI agent that aims to automate web tasks on users’ behalf. TechCrunch tests show that early versions of AI agents browsing websites leave much to be desired. While Perplexity’s Comet and OpenAI’s ChatGPT agent perform well for plain tasks, they struggle to reliably automate more tedious problems that users might want to offload to an AI system.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
Indeed, OpenAI Browser also has a web browsing agent. Using “agent mode”, users can ask ChatGPT to perform compact browser tasks on their behalf. The company says that at launch, Agent Mode is only available to ChatGPT users on the Plus, Pro and Business tiers.
In an interview at the OpenAI DevDay conference, ChatGPT CEO Nick Turley told TechCrunch that he was inspired by the way browsers have redefined what the operating system looks like. Turley noted that browsers have revolutionized the way people do work online, and he believes ChatGPT is a similar phenomenon.
Time will tell whether the OpenAI browser can harm Google Chrome, which is used by over 3 billion users worldwide. AI browsers are quite popular in Silicon Valley today, but their impact on the wider world is confined.