What is ChatGPT Atlas, and how is a browser with ChatGPT built in different?

Yesterday, Tuesday, October 21, 2025, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Atlas, a web browser with ChatGPT at its center. A browser is the program you use to visit websites, such as Chrome, Safari or Edge. Until now, using ChatGPT while browsing meant switching tabs and copying text back and forth. In Atlas, ChatGPT sits beside every page and already knows what you are looking at.

OpenAI presented Atlas in a livestream. It is available worldwide for Mac computers, for people on the Free, Plus, Pro and Go plans, and in beta for Business users and, when an administrator allows it, Enterprise and Edu users. Versions for Windows, iPhone and Android are coming later.

What is in the browser

Atlas looks like a normal browser with tabs, bookmarks and an address bar, plus several ChatGPT features:

When you first open Atlas, you sign in to ChatGPT and can import bookmarks, saved passwords and history from your current browser. Your existing ChatGPT memory works here too.

How browser memories work

Browser memories are notes ChatGPT keeps about the pages you visit, so later questions can draw on them. OpenAI's example is asking ChatGPT to find the job postings you looked at last week and summarize the industry trends they show, which only works if it remembers what you browsed.

The feature is off unless you turn it on. You can view or archive memories in settings, and deleting your browsing history deletes the memories tied to it. A switch in the address bar decides, site by site, whether ChatGPT may see a page at all; when it is off, nothing from that page is read or remembered. By default, OpenAI does not use what you browse to train its models, unless you opt in.

How agent mode works in your own browser

An agent is an AI that carries out a task over many steps instead of just answering. OpenAI introduced ChatGPT agent earlier this year. In Atlas, the agent runs natively in your own browser and uses the context of what you are already doing, which OpenAI says makes it faster and more useful.

Here is how a task might unfold, following OpenAI's own dinner-party example:

Here is my lasagna recipe for eight people. Find a grocery store that
delivers to my address, add every ingredient to the cart, and stop
before checkout so I can review the order.

1. ChatGPT reads the recipe and builds a shopping list.
2. It may ask whether it should start opening tabs and clicking; you can also press the agent mode button yourself.
3. It finds a store, searches for each item and adds it to the cart, while you watch.
4. It stops before paying, as asked, and you check the cart.

Agent mode is a preview for Plus, Pro and Business users, and OpenAI warns it may make mistakes on complex tasks. TechCrunch adds that in its own testing, browsing agents so far handle simple tasks well but struggle with more involved ones.

The risks, and the safeguards

Giving an AI access to sites where you are logged in brings new risks. The biggest is prompt injection: instructions hidden in a web page or email that try to override what you asked, for example to steal data from your accounts. OpenAI says it has run thousands of hours of red-teaming, deliberate attacks by testers, but that its safeguards will not stop every attack.

Its protections include:

• the agent is blocked from running code, downloading files and adding browser extensions;
• it has no access to your other apps or your computer's files;
• it pauses on sensitive sites such as banks so you can watch what it does;
• you can run it logged out, so it cannot act as you on your accounts.

Parents who use ChatGPT's parental controls can also turn off browser memories and agent mode for their teens.

Why it matters

TechCrunch describes Atlas as a major step in OpenAI's effort to replace Google as the place people go first when they look things up. It joins other AI browsers, including Comet from Perplexity and Dia from The Browser Company, while Google and Microsoft are adding AI to Chrome and Edge. Chrome alone has more than 3 billion users, so whether Atlas can win many of them remains to be seen. OpenAI calls the launch a step toward a web used mostly through agents.

How do you set up ChatGPT Atlas safely?

Download Atlas for macOS from chatgpt.com/atlas and sign in with your ChatGPT account. When importing from your old browser, consider bringing bookmarks and history but think twice before importing saved passwords.

Decide on browser memories before you start. If you turn them on, use the address-bar switch to hide sensitive sites, such as your bank, email or health portals, and review your memories in settings now and then.

For agent mode, begin with low-stakes tasks like research and comparisons, and use logged-out mode whenever a task does not need your accounts. Watch the agent while it works, tell it to stop before any purchase or message, and check its results before you rely on them.