Atlas goes away, however its largest concepts have gotten core components of ChatGPT.
OpenAI is retiring Atlas, its AI-powered browser, lower than a 12 months after its debut, folding the browser’s most vital options into ChatGPT’s increasing productiveness instruments as a substitute of preserving Atlas as a standalone product.
The firm confirmed the transfer throughout its ChatGPT Work launch, the place it unveiled a collection of looking upgrades throughout ChatGPT’s desktop app, cloud-based agent, and Chrome extension. According to OpenAI’s James Sun, the corporate is focusing on Aug. 9 because the deprecation date and can present extra data to Atlas customers by means of e-mail and in-app notifications.
Atlas’s expertise lives on inside ChatGPT
Rather than abandoning AI-powered looking, OpenAI is spreading Atlas’s capabilities throughout merchandise folks already use.
The up to date ChatGPT desktop app now features a built-in browser with assist for a number of tabs, downloads, password administration, autofill, enterprise single sign-on, passkeys, printing, and web page search. Sun stated customers can even collaborate with ChatGPT whereas viewing web sites, paperwork, and dashboards with out switching between functions.
OpenAI can also be introducing a cloud browser that lets ChatGPT Work brokers browse the online remotely to finish duties akin to researching authorities web sites, discovering journey choices, or submitting contact types. Users can approve looking actions, monitor progress by means of screenshots, or take management of the browser when wanted.
Meanwhile, a brand new ChatGPT Chrome extension brings ChatGPT and Codex instantly into the browser, permitting the assistant to know the present webpage, highlighted textual content, browser tabs, and native information whereas preserving conversations synchronized with the desktop app.
Explaining the choice to retire Atlas, Sun wrote on X, “All these capabilities were built on what we learned from Atlas users who took a leap of faith on a new browser.” He added, “You taught us how agents can help make browsing and doing work on the open web better, and we are applying these learnings to these new products.”
Part of a broader product technique
The Atlas shutdown follows OpenAI’s effort to simplify its rising product lineup. The firm has been consolidating merchandise into what has been described as a ChatGPT “super app,” combining options beforehand unfold throughout ChatGPT, Codex, and Atlas.
The transfer additionally comes after OpenAI scaled again a number of facet tasks, together with shutting down the standalone Sora video-generation app, as the corporate locations larger emphasis on productiveness options and competitors with Anthropic.
Competition in AI looking stays intense
OpenAI’s resolution comes as AI firms race to reshape how folks work together with the online.
Competitors together with Perplexity with Comet and The Browser Company with Dia proceed to develop AI-first browsers, whereas Google and Microsoft are including AI capabilities instantly into Chrome and Edge. Instead of making an attempt to switch current browsers, OpenAI now seems to be betting that AI looking works greatest as a characteristic embedded inside software program folks already use.
Atlas could matter extra as a blueprint
Atlas could have had a brief life as a standalone browser, however its affect might final for much longer inside ChatGPT.
By transferring its looking instruments into merchandise folks already use, OpenAI is eradicating one of many largest boundaries going through AI browsers: convincing customers to modify. The technique might make agent-powered analysis and on-line process completion extra accessible, whereas inserting ChatGPT on the middle of an more and more wide selection of web-based work.
That comfort comes with increased stakes. As ChatGPT good points entry to browser tabs, passwords, native information, and on-line types, customers and companies will want clear controls over what the assistant can see and do….
