ISLAMABAD: ChatGPT-maker OpenAI on Tuesday announced that it is introducing its own search browser, Atlas, putting it 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 pull in more internet traffic and the revenue that comes from digital advertising.
“This is an AI-powered web browser built around ChatGPT,” OpenAI chief Sam Altman said in a streamed presentation.
OpenAI has been ramping up its challenge to Google, which has responded by rapidly building more AI capabilities into search and across its platform.
Shares of Alphabet, which owns the Chrome browser, were down 2.6% in afternoon trading, Reuters reported.
OpenAI has said ChatGPT already has more than 800 million users, but many of them get it for free. The San Francisco-based company is losing more money than it makes and has been looking for ways to turn a profit.
OpenAI said Atlas launches Tuesday on Apple laptops running macOS and will later come to Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s iOS phone operating system, and Google’s Android phone system.
OpenAI’s browser is coming out just a few months after one of its executives testified that the company would be interested in buying Google’s industry-leading Chrome browser if a federal judge had required it to be sold to prevent the abuses that resulted in Google’s ubiquitous search engine being declared an illegal monopoly.
But U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta last month issued a decision that rejected the Chrome sale sought by the U.S. Justice Department in the monopoly case, partly because he believed advances in the AI industry already are reshaping the competitive landscape.
