OpenAI launched a new web-browser last week named Atlas. It has ChatGPT and an agent built in so you can browse the web, get direct responses, and have automated task performed on your behalf.
Over the past few days, I’ve been playing around with Atlas. I’ve used Atlas to do my normal web surfing, and I’ve also tried to use the ChatGPT features–plus I threw it some weird agentic missions to see how well it handled them. Atlas seems to be working fine, if I may say so myself. My big takeaway from this is that it is pretty pointless for anyone who is not employed by OpenAI and that Atlas is nothing more than cynicism disguised as software.
To understand why, we should first look at its agentic abilities–which are where it really differentiates itself.
While browsing Amazon, I asked Atlas to do some shopping using a pre-set suggestion. “Start a shopping cart with items that I am likely to want, based on what I have browsed here, and highlight any active promotional codes. Let me review the items before checkout. It selected a notebook I had recently purchased but no longer required, some deodorant that I had recently purchased but no longer required, and a cleaner that I considered, but decided was too costly and no long needed because I purchased a cheaper one.
It took about 10 minutes for it to do that. I cleaned out my shopping cart and thought it was lucky that it didn’t buy anything.
I asked it to create my status update on Facebook, which was already a mess with AI. It scoured my browser history to create a long status. I won’t bore with the details, but here are some highlights: “I used Smartsheet and TeamSnap because editors also juggle their rosters! Shopify and Amazon were flirted with (holiday shopping? side hustle? You decide), and kept track of the news… I also remembered to log in to Slack, set up Zoom meetings, read some NYTimes articles, and read some Technology Review articles. Who says the life of an editor isn’t glamorous. “
Uh. Okay. I decided not to post that. You get the idea. ChatGPT is built into the browser, which is another unique feature. I used the word “unique” and not “useful”. I found it difficult to see any obvious benefit of having this built-in chatbot rather than going directly to chatgpt.com. In some cases, it was even worse and dumber than the built-in ChatGPT.
I asked the built in ChatGPT, for example, to summarize an MIT Technology Review article I was reading. Instead of answering my question about the page that I was on, the built-in ChatGPT referred me back to the previous page where I had been when I started the session. It spit out some useless nonsense. Thanks, AI.
OpenAI has been promoting Atlas very aggressively on ChatGPT, suggesting that people download it. It may even get a lot more downloads as a result. This feels like a hollow salvo in the new browser battles if it doesn’t give people a reason to switch from more established browsers like Chrome or Safari.
I’ve found it difficult to understand the purpose of Atlas. Who is this browser for? Who is the customer? Atlas is for OpenAI, is the answer I’ve come up with. The company that collects data about how and what a person browses is the real customer of Atlas. This review originally appeared in The Debrief is Mat Honan’s exclusive weekly newsletter for subscribers only, .
