OpenAI unveiled an internet browser on Tuesday in a bid to make its ChatGPT AI product the start line for on-line entry and set up itself as central pillar of the web economic system.
ChatGPT Atlas, as the brand new browser is named, appears and works very similar to a regular internet browser however infuses generative AI capabilities all through the expertise, placing ChatGPT entrance and middle for every thing from web search and e-commerce procuring to e mail.
“The browser is already the place a ton of labor and life occurs,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mentioned in a livestream announcement and demo of the brand new browser on Tuesday. “We expect that by having ChatGPT be a core approach to make use of that… we will take this gorgeous 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 well-liked internet browsers, completed Tuesday’s session primarily 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 massive language fashions and AI chatbots.
OpenAI made Atlas accessible for computer systems working the Mac working system on Tuesday, and mentioned it deliberate to introduce variations for Home windows PCs and for cellular gadgets sooner or later.
ChatGPT Atlas represents a risk to Google not solely as an internet browser, however as a possible various to Google’s search engine. The Atlas browser “residence web page” appears much like the Google search residence web page, besides that the field on the middle of the white web page is for interacting with the ChatGPT AI bot reasonably than the Google search engine. The ChatGPT field serves as each a standard chatbot that customers can speak to, a search engine, and because the browser’s tackle field, through which customers kind URL of the net web page they want to go to.
A handful of hyperlinks instantly beneath the ChatGPT search field checklist numerous subjects, like trending information gadgets, customized in keeping with the person’s searching historical past and pursuits.
OpenAI livestream
Among the many options in Atlas browser is an Ask GPT button; customers can click on it and ask the AI bot for added info or insights relative to no matter internet web page they’re visiting. (In a single 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 procuring website can be applicable for a marathon.) A “reminiscence” characteristic lets customers retrieve a previous internet web page by describing what the web page was about.
The Atlas browser can even make it simple for customers to arrange “brokers” that perform duties on their behalf, reminiscent of ordering the components for a cooking recipe. OpenAI mentioned the agent characteristic will initially be accessible solely to paying prospects of the ChatGPT Plus and Professional variations.
OpenA is one among 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 doubtlessly 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 for the reason that introduction of tabs, a characteristic that dates again to the early 2000s.
In the course of the demo on Tuesday, OpenAI staffers acknowledged the safety dangers that include new options reminiscent of “agentic” capabilities, which primarily hand over management of the browser to ChatGPT. OpenAI mentioned it had in-built numerous safeguards, together with the flexibility to make use of the browser with out letting the agent be logged in, and famous that the ChatGPT agent can solely entry information throughout the browser, not information on a person’s PC.
Nonetheless some commentators expressed wariness over the potential safety and privateness implications following the Atlas launch. “The safety and privateness dangers concerned right here nonetheless really feel insurmountably excessive to me – I definitely received’t be trusting any of those merchandise till a bunch of safety researchers have given them a really thorough beating,” wrote Simon Willison, an open supply developer who publishes a preferred weblog about tech and AI.
For a more in-depth look at how AI-powered instruments have revived the “browser wars,” learn this latest Fortune deep dive.
Replace: This story has been up to date to incorporate extra particulars from the launch.
