OpenAI launches Atlas web browser to compete with Google Chrome

OpenAI said Tuesday it is offering its own web browserAtlas, putting the maker of ChatGPT in direct competition with Google as more internet users rely on artificial intelligence to answer their questions.

Making itself a gateway to online searches could allow OpenAI, the world’s most valuable startup, to attract more internet traffic and revenue generated from digital advertising.

ChatGPT already has more than 800 million users but many of them are getting it for free, OpenAI said. The company is headquartered in San Francisco Losing more money than you make He was looking for ways to make a profit.

Atlas will launch Tuesday on Apple laptops, and will later come to Microsoft’s Windows operating system, Apple’s iOS phone operating system and Google’s Android phone system, OpenAI said.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, called it a “rare, once-in-a-decade opportunity to rethink what a browser is and how we use it.”

OpenAI’s browser comes just a few months after an executive testified that the company would be interested in buying Google’s industry-leading Chrome browser if a federal judge orders its sale to prevent violations that led to Google’s widely used search engine being declared an illegal monopoly.

But US District Judge Amit Mehta issued a ruling last month Refuse to sell Chrome The US Department of Justice requested him in the antitrust case, in part because he believes that advances in the artificial intelligence industry are already reshaping the competitive landscape.

OpenAI will face a major challenge against Chrome, which has amassed around 3 billion users around the world and adds some AI features from Google’s Gemini technology.

Chrome’s massive success could provide a blueprint for OpenAI as it enters the browser market. When Google launched Chrome in 2008, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was so dominant that few observers believed a new browser would pose a massive threat.

But Chrome quickly won legions of fans by loading web pages more quickly than Internet Explorer, while offering other advantages that enabled it to turn the market on its head. Microsoft ended up ditching Explorer and introducing Edge, which works similarly to Chrome.

Perplexity, another smaller AI startup, launched its Comet browser earlier this year. It also expressed interest in buying Chrome and eventually made an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer for the browser, which deadlocked when Mehta decided not to break up Google.

Altman said he expects the chatbot interface to replace the traditional browser URL bar as the center of how people use the Internet in the future.

“Tabs were great, but we haven’t seen a lot of innovation in the browser since then,” he said in a video presentation broadcast Tuesday.

One of the standout features of the ChatGPT Atlas browser is a “proxy mode” that accesses a laptop and effectively clicks around the Internet on a person’s behalf, armed with what it has learned from users’ browser history and what they are seeking to learn and explaining its process while searching.

“It uses the Internet for you,” Altman said.