ChatGPT Atlas and the next era of web browsing — the OpenAI Podcast Ep. 9

Hello, I'm Andrew Main, and welcome to the OpenAI Podcast. There have been a lot of exciting releases from OpenAI recently, including GPT 5.1, Sora, and one of my favorite new applications, ChatGPT Atlas. Today, we're going to be talking to the team behind it, Ben Goodger and Darin Fisher, and explore some of the reasons for why OpenAI decided to make a browser, what the future of agentic capabilities mean, and where everything's headed next.

[upbeat music] The time is right 'cause it's actually how people should be starting their journey.

We're moving to a world where you can just tell the computer what you want.

So I think it's kind of powerful, this idea that it, that the agent has its own workspace.

My view for this has always been that this is like a long-term investment.

Let's begin with, what is Atlas and why?

So Atlas is a new kind of browser, uh, for an era of the web where people are interacting with new technology in natural language. And so it's a- the kind of browser where you can just tell it what you want, whether it's to find the next outfit that you're gonna buy or to help you solve a really hard problem, and then it can help you harness the web to get a bunch of stuff done. Um, and so central to this, this idea is that if we take ChatGPT and make it the heart of your browser, not just an add-on, uh, it's something that can actually help you make sense of the content that you're seeing on the web. It's something that can help you take action on the web. It's something that can, you know, learn from your browsing to personalize your experience and help you with tasks that aren't just done in a few minutes, but might take days, or weeks, or months, or just generally help you, uh, become a more curious, more effective person.

And it can help you come back to a task that maybe you've not had a chance to work on in a while because it will remember what you were doing for you and help, help you, uh, get right back into where you were.

Why now?

I think the, the progression of technology, you know, with, with these AI models has been really stunning to watch over the past couple of years. Uh, and it feels like we're at this sort of sweet spot, where the capabilities of, of, um, not just the LLMs that have powered ChatGPT, but also sort of this new area of, uh, computer use and some of the other surrounding technology, is at a point where we can build some really compelling experiences for people, so we wanted to give it a shot.

You know, like Ben said, the models have gotten so much better, and they continue to get better, and you see the slope of innovation there and the pace of, of improvement. If you look back at the beginning of the year when Operator first came out, for example, and it sort of like hints at some of the potential, and now you fast-forward to where Atlas is with agent, agent and how much faster it is, how much more capable it is, just look at that slope, and you start to project, "What about ne- what's it gonna look like next year, five years out?" et cetera. And to get this sort of-- get that foundation in place, that's what we were excited about, and it felt like the right time. Uh, for me, personally, you know, I, I felt like, you know, I had made that transition to seeing how ChatGPT makes so much sense in my life to- and how much I was using it and feeling like I'm putting ChatGPT at the core of a browser, not just another tab that you have to go to, to... but to have it be at the core and part of that flow. The time is right 'cause it's actually how people should be starting their journey, and so we want to make that, uh, just so natural and easy. And, and, and, uh, so I'm really excited to-- that, that we've been able to bring Atlas up, and I'm excited to bring it to more platforms.