OpenAI has launched Atlas, a free web browser that uses ChatGPT as its search engine and integrates with the company’s other products. Initially released for Apple’s macOS, OpenAI says support for Windows, Android and iOS is coming soon. News that OpenAI was developing the product surfaced in April as part of the Google antitrust trial, where OpenAI executive Nick Turley testified the company was interested in buying Chrome. Now the ChatGPT Atlas browser is available for download, challenging Chrome and others. Rather than type queries, people can chat with Atlas, something Chrome and Perplexity’s new Comet browser also allow.

“This is an AI-powered web browser built around ChatGPT,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a live stream introducing Atlas. “We think AI represents a rare once-in-a-decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be about,” he continued, adding that “tabs were great, but we haven’t seen a lot of innovation since then, so we got very excited to really rethink what this could be.”

“Part of Atlas’ value proposition is the ability to call on agents to do tasks directly in the browser,” writes VentureBeat, noting that “agents will only be available to ChatGPT Business, Plus and Pro users for now.”

Globally, Apple computer users — and soon everyone else — can download and use the basic version when logged into a free ChatGPT account. “Atlas is meant to offer users a more seamless way to browse the Web” and in addition to chat “invites users to either search for information via a prompt or question, or just type a URL,” VentureBeat reports.

The New York Times sees attracting people to use Atlas as a way to get people to use other OpenAI services — including recently introduced ChatGPT shopping, directly and through Walmart —  as well as “more easily gather data that can be used to improve its AI technologies.”

Atlas has the “sidecar” feature popularized in AI-powered browsers, where information opens in an adjacent column, in addition to “‘browser history,’ meaning that ChatGPT can now log the websites you visit and [see] what you do on them, and use that information to make its answers more personalized,” explains TechCrunch.

In an announcement, OpenAI says the Atlas “browser memories are private to your ChatGPT account” and users can delete or archive them in settings.

Related:
OpenAI’s New Browser Raises ‘Insurmountably High’ Security Concerns, Gizmodo, 10/22/25