OpenAI is shutting down Atlas, but its AI browser ambitions are still growing
OpenAI is sunsetting its AI-powered browser after less than a year. But it's moving some agentic browsing features to its desktop app and a Chrome extension. OpenAI is sunsetting Atlas, the AI-powered browser it launched in October with ChatGPT at its core.
Key Takeaways
- But it's not giving up on the idea that AI should help people browse the web.
Instead, it's taking some of the agentic browsing features it tested in Atlas and redistributing them across ChatGPT's desktop app and a Google Chrome extension.
- Perplexity launched Comet, The Browser Company launched Dia, and Google and Microsoft have updated Chrome and Edge, respectively, with new AI-powered features.
After a few months of experimenting, OpenAI appears to have concluded that the browser is a feature, not the destination.
- It's a direct competitor to Google's Gemini Side Panel, which performs several of the same tasks.
OpenAI is also boosting its ChatGPT desktop app by featuring a more robust browser that allows users to browse websites, log into accounts, download files, and interact with web pages without leaving ChatGPT.
- Rebecca Bellan Senior Reporter Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch where she covers the business, policy, and emerging trends shaping artificial intelligence.
Her work has also appeared in Forbes, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and other publications.
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But it's not giving up on the idea that AI should help people browse the web. Instead, it's taking some of the agentic browsing features it tested in Atlas and redistributing them across ChatGPT's desktop app and a Google Chrome extension. The move to shut down Atlas comes a few months after OpenAI's CEO of applications Fidji Simo told the team to cut back on "side quests," which led to the AI firm shutting down its AI video-generation tool Sora .
For much of the past year, the AI industry had been engaged in a war to unseat Chrome as the place where people spend most of their time online. Perplexity launched Comet, The Browser Company launched Dia, and Google and Microsoft have updated Chrome and Edge, respectively, with new AI-powered features. After a few months of experimenting, OpenAI appears to have concluded that the browser is a feature, not the destination.
So it's folding Atlas' browser-like agent capabilities into the places people already work - and that includes Chrome. OpenAI is launching a ChatGPT extension on Chrome that gives it access to the context of the page you're viewing, lets users ask questions about web pages, summarize content, or start longer tasks all from the browser. It's a direct competitor to Google's Gemini Side Panel, which performs several of the same tasks.
For more details please read the original article at TechCrunch AI.
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