OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT has launched the ChatGPT Atlas web browser. The Atlas browser has ChatGPT built into it, enabling it to assist you while you’re browsing or trying to solve a problem. One of the most significant features of Atlas is the ‘browser memories’ feature, which learns from your web browsing history to personalize your ChatGPT experience. This feature provides browser context awareness that may reduce the amount of effort and details required when writing your questions.
‘Agent’ mode (available to Plus, Pro, and Business plan users) can do relevant tasks in the background while you’re browsing. A few examples:
- Planning events or booking appointments while you browse — This is a new, advanced level of automation that takes AI chat bots from answering questions to automatically doing what you need without having to ask them. The time savings and return on investment will likely be massive.
- Researching and analyzing while browsing.
One of the use cases OpenAI presented is that you can ask it something along the lines of “Find all the job postings I was looking at last week and create a summary of industry trends so I can prepare for interviews”.
At the moment, the browser memories feature is optional. However, using highly-personalized services like these in a web browser translates to a tremendous blow to privacy because they are built around activity tracking. OpenAI warned that your conversations with ChatGPT are scanned and may be reported to authorities. While it is good to report illegal content. Tracking of peoples’ online activities has facilitated government abuse of power on many occasions and has also directly threatened democracy. That renders the ‘nothing to hide if you’re not a criminal’ argument a moot point.
AI chatbots (including but not limited to ChatGPT) are vulnerable to prompt injection attacks. AI chatbot vendors have warned about not entering sensitive information in ChatGPT and similar products. However, they are now offering AI browsers that will end up distracting users from that security precaution. I guess the next word of advice will be: Don’t use Atlas for anything that may involve sensitive information.
The ChatGPT Atlas browser is currently available for MacOS, and versions for Windows, iOS, and Android are on their way. It is uncertain if there will be a Linux version.
