OpenAI is shutting down Atlas, but its AI browser ambitions are still growing

After a few months of experimenting, OpenAI appears to have concluded that the browser is a feature, not the destination. So it’s folding Atlas’s browser-like agent capabilities into the places people already work — and that includes Chrome. 

OpenAI is launching a ChatGPT extension on Chrome that gives it access to the context of the page you’re viewing, lets users ask questions about webpages, summarize content, or start longer tasks all from the browser. It’s a direct competitor to Google’s Gemini Side Panel, which performs several of the same tasks. 

OpenAI is also boosting its ChatGPT desktop app by featuring a more robust browser that allows users to browse websites, log into accounts, download files, and interact with web pages without leaving ChatGPT. A separate cloud browser runs remotely on OpenAI’s servers as a place where the app’s agents can complete tasks on a user’s behalf. 

Together, the updates turn ChatGPT into a continuous workspace that spans Chrome, the desktop app, and an AI agent.