ChatGPT launches Atlas, an AI-powered browser that can compete with Google Chrome
The browser is free, but advanced features are only available to paid ChatGPT users.
BarcelonaThe company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, has presented ChatGPT Atlas, a new web browser powered by artificial intelligence. Atlas integrates ChatGPT's usual chat function, but also allows the AI to control the cursor, automatically executing actions such as booking flights, filling out forms, or editing documents directly from the web. This new move is seen as an attempt by OpenAI to compete with Google's Chrome browser, which has led the market for years. For now, ChatGPT Atlas is only available for Apple computers, so Windows users will have to wait.
The browser is free, although more advanced features such as "agent mode" are reserved for paying ChatGPT users. In a virtual presentation on Tuesday, the company's CEO, Sam Altman, said that the project is "still in its early stages" and that they want to bring the browser to Windows and mobile devices "as soon as possible." According to Altman, the new tool "better understands" and "proactively finds" everything the user wants to search for on the internet.
What can ChatGPT Atlas do?
The browser allows the user to open ChatGPT in a sidebar at any time to talk to the OpenAI assistant, for example, to ask questions about the content of the website they are visiting. It can also compare products or analyze data. In "agent mode," available to premium users, ChatGPT can interact with website content and complete various tasks such as searching for travel information and then purchasing the necessary products. Along these lines, OpenAI also demonstrated in a demo how ChatGPT could find a recipe online and automatically purchase all the ingredients.
Atlas vs. Google Chrome: A New Digital Competition
The launch of ChatGPT Atlas is the latest move by OpenAI to capitalize on ChatGPT's 800 million weekly active users, according to Reuters. The browser could accelerate a shift in the internet search engine market toward AI-powered searches, as users value tools that allow them to have a conversation and synthesize information instead of traditional lists of links. This move intensifies the competition between Google and OpenAI. Google, for its part, has been trying to incorporate artificial intelligence when displaying search results for some time. It first did so with so-called AI Overviews, highlights of text generated with artificial intelligence for a specific search, and later implemented theAI Mode, a chatbot-based search engine that has been rolling out in Spain for a few days, but it doesn't work in Catalan and isn't available for all devices or browsers.
OpenAI's move comes in a particularly turbulent sector, and it's not just competing against Google. This summer, Perplexity launched its browser. Comete, which instead of answering users' questions with a long list of results, as Google traditionally does, offers links to relevant web pages and generates a written response to each query. Microsoft has also included Copilot, its AI, inEdge browser.
