The news: OpenAI launched an AI-powered browser—ChatGPT Atlas—and jumped headfirst into a new kind of rivalry with Google and Perplexity.

• ChatGPT Atlas is built around OpenAI’s flagship chatbot and features agentic capabilities.
• The browser is available globally on macOS, and access for Windows, iOS, and Android users is coming soon, per OpenAI.

“We think AI represents a rare, once-a-decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be about and how to use one,” CEO Sam Altman said on an OpenAI livestream.

How it works: Atlas offers a memory feature that personalizes actions and recommendations, Atlas product lead Adam Fry said. ChatGPT follows users throughout their search experience as a split-screen “companion,” removing the need to open the chatbot in a separate page or tab.

• “Browser memories” can recall details from prior browsing activity to offer personalized suggestions and results, such as dinner options based on a previously viewed recipe or a summary of job postings the user clicked on recently.
• The browser can also find documents or web pages based on a natural language description.

Atlas also features an agent mode that can navigate websites on a user’s behalf, completing tasks like booking reservations, editing documents, ordering groceries, or conducting shopping research. This tool is currently only available to Plus and Pro users.

Why it matters: Beyond reshaping the browser market, Atlas makes ChatGPT a more intelligent and informed service due to its ability to individually customize actions and services based on first-party user data. Users can browse in incognito mode, and the company won’t use Atlas browsing data for model training unless users opt in.

Turning ChatGPT into a direct search tool could also help OpenAI attract more traffic and capitalize on its extensive user base.

• The company didn’t clarify whether Atlas will be ad-free, as Perplexity’s Comet browser is, but it could open up an opportunity for OpenAI to start pulling in digital ad revenues.
• Atlas could drive more premium subscriptions and help OpenAI position ChatGPT as a de facto operating system and an AI layer that blurs the lines between app, assistant, and platform.

Yes, but: Atlas faces an uphill battle in the browser competition, considering Google’s entrenched position and Chrome’s dominant share of the browser market. Google is on its own AI mission with Chrome via Gemini AI integrations and plans to add agentic abilities in the near future.

OpenAI, which previously expressed interest in buying Chrome, is now on a separate path to own the interface layer between users and the internet.

What’s next for brands: Companies should start optimizing for conversational search by ensuring websites are structured so AI agents can easily find and surface them in user queries. This includes using complete sentences, providing product specs and pricing information clearly in descriptions, and inserting paragraph headers that break content into easy-to-parse sections.

Brands should also test Atlas to see how their content—as well as competitors’—surfaces and experiment with alternatives like Comet to clearly understand how AI browsers engage with users.

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