OpenAI Atlas Browser Hands On: I’m Not Convinced the Web Needs a Chatbot Tour Guide

OpenAI’s recently launched Atlas browser is a fascinating inversion of what users may expect from a browser, centering AI answers above traditional web links. Every click in a regular browser is a chance to see a new part of the web. Every click in Atlas is a chance to use ChatGPT.

Just typed a question into the address bar? That’s now a ChatGPT query. Want help contextualizing a web page? The Ask ChatGPT sidebar can see and analyze what’s on your screen. Want someone to buy your Halloween costume? The “agent mode” can click around on Amazon and throw some vampire fangs into your cart.

Ryan O’Rouke, OpenAI’s lead designer for the browser, demonstrated the Ask ChatGPT feature during the livestream announcement of Atlas. He asked it to summarize GitHub code appearing on the web page in his browser. He called it “a major unlock,” since ChatGPT can now see what's happening on the page. "It's basically you inviting ChatGPT into your corner of the internet," O’Rouke said.

The Ask ChatGPT feature is notably free to use in Atlas, unlike the browser agent tool that’s reserved for subscribers to ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Pro. Here, ChatGPT shows up as another column-constrained bot on the right side of your screen, in the same vein as the AI sidebars in Perplexity’s Comet browser and Microsoft’s Edge.

After a few days of testing OpenAI’s Ask ChatGPT feature in the Atlas Browser, I’m convinced that I want to surf the web alone. Sans sidebar. In peace.

The browser is built using Chromium, an open-source browser project managed by Google that provides the codebase for Chrome, Opera, and others. Because of this, Atlas looks a lot like Chrome. (As I swiped between the two browsers on my laptop during testing, I forgot which was which a couple of times.) The nascent browser’s best days are still ahead of it, with a roadmap of upcoming features such as tab groups and an ad-blocker that could build it up to be a more fully realized competitor to Chrome. It’s available only on macOS for the time being.

With that in mind, the Ask ChatGPT sidebar in Atlas felt clunky during my first couple of days. Not only was it difficult to get used to, I found myself having trouble thinking of questions to ask about the news articles, online recipes, and other web pages as I scrolled around. Also, the sidebar squishes the main content window, so websites you visit may appear skinnier than usual. It compressed the WIRED homepage, leaving it looking incredibly janky.