As we wrote last month after Google integrated Gemini straight into Chrome, “it’s not enough to have a web browser these days. You need a browser on cocaine—or, at least, the middle two letters: AI.”
That’s all great if you’re Google, of course, but what if you’re a lowly AI startup without a browser of your very own?
You build one.
This week, OpenAI launched its long-awaited browser, ChatGPT Atlas.
The Chromium-based browser tries to do Chrome one better by tucking a ChatGPT sidebar onto every webpage. Like Gemini in Chrome, it’s also agentic. So go ahead and ask it to book that flight to Tora Bora…or was that Bora Bora? Whatever—it can probably figure out which one you meant because it also has memory. The browser learns about you from your conversations and the sites you visit.
Before you get all freaked out that your browser is stalking you, OpenAI says “memories in Atlas are completely optional” and that they’re deleted whenever you delete your browser history.
But, just in case, maybe don’t go replacing your therapist just yet.
Here’s the updated rundown of agentic AI browsers:
- Google inserted Gemini into Chrome in September
- Perplexity came out with Comet in August
- Firefox makes room for multiple chatbots; its most recent update includes Microsoft Copilot (which also integrates with Microsoft Edge)
- Opera released its “fully agentic” Neon browser in March
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Atlassian-owned Dia remains in beta
- Safari is adding agents via the Apple Intelligence system