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OpenAI unveiled "Atlas," an AI-powered search browser built around its Chat technology, on Tuesday, directly challenging Google Chrome's dominance in the web browsing market. OpenAI chief Sam Altman announced the new product in a streamed presentation, emphasizing its reliance on artificial intelligence. This move marks an escalation in OpenAI's competition with Google, which has responded by integrating AI capabilities into its search engine and wider platform.
Altman and a team of executives demonstrated an "agent" mode that has a chatbot conduct searches on a user's behalf. Altman said that in agent mode, ChatGPT uses the web browser independently, returning with what it finds. "It's got all your stuff and is clicking around," Altman said.
"You can watch it or not, you don't have to, but it's using the internet for you."
Atlas will go live Tuesday on computers powered by Apple's operating system free of charge, but agent mode will only be available to users of paid Plus or Pro versions of ChatGPT, according to Altman.
"We want to bring this to Windows and to mobile devices as quickly as we can," Altman said, without providing a timeline. "It is still early days for this project."
Some Atlas offerings demonstrated in the stream seemed similar to features already incorporated into Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge internet search browsers.
Tech industry rivals Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Elon Musk's xAI have been pouring billions of dollars into artificial intelligence since the blockbuster launch of the first version of ChatGPT in late 2022. However, it's noted that Google has a significant infrastructure advantage in terms of providing browser capabilities to billions of users. A big question is how well Atlas will perform when under pressure from the kinds of user volume handled by Google.
The debut of Atlas comes on the heels of Google escaping a breakup of its Chrome browser in a major US competition case, but with the judge imposing remedies whose impact remains uncertain just as AI starts to compete with search engines.
Judge Amit Mehta, who found a year ago that.
