ChatGPT just released its own browser. Be careful when you use it.

OpenAI’s Atlas offers AI-powered ease of use. What is the cost? Allowing ChatGPT to keep track of and remember what you do online.

This week, the company that made ChatGPT, the world’s most popular chatbot, released a web browser that promises to make browsing the web smarter. In return, ChatGPT Atlas wants to be able to see and remember everything you do online. OpenAI’s browser is better at spying than even Google Chrome, which is saying a lot. Not only does it keep track of the websites you visit, but it also keeps “memories” of what you do and see on those sites. It can even take over your mouse and look things up for you.

It’s too soon to know if Atlas’s new AI features are useful enough to make all the data collection worth it. But the effects on privacy are huge, and the settings for keeping track of what Atlas recalls are at best hard to understand. It matters a lot which browser you use. It’s your daily connection to the internet, a source of useful information that businesses can use to show you ads, direct you to certain sites, and teach AI about your habits and interests.

ChatGPT is becoming the main location to go to find websites and information instead of Google.

Others are also trying to use AI to make new browsers. Perplexity makes a browser called Comet, and Google has introduced its Gemini bot to Chrome in the last several months. It adds that soon it will also include agent features that enable AI perform things for you. The Washington Post works with both OpenAI and Perplexity.

So what does Atlas really do? ChatGPT is becoming the main location to go to find websites and information instead of Google. You can talk to the bot about the sites you’re looking at by clicking the “Ask ChatGPT” button in the upper right. You could, for example, ask it to sum up an article or look at some data. And it makes it easy to get to ChatGPT with just one click for things like editing email drafts.

Adam Fry, the head of OpenAI’s Atlas product, said, “The goal was to make it easier for ChatGPT to work with you while you browse the web.”

But looking into Atlas’s privacy policies and controls showed something more sinister. It is working behind the scenes to learn a lot more about you. If you give the browser permission during setup, it will remember the sites you visit and show them to you “when you need it.” Atlas could perform what you asked, like “Open the Halloween decorations I was looking at last week in some tabs.”

Atlas doesn’t just remember page addresses; it also recalls “facts and insights” from the sites themselves based on summaries of the content that OpenAI creates on its own servers. Fry said it might remember that you have a trip coming up, that you like Delta Air Lines, and that you use Google Calendar.

These memories affect how you use the browser. In subsequent talks, ChatGPT will change its answers based on your Atlas recollections. The home screen of the browser also suggests things you should do next, such “find a vegetarian recipe.”

Google’s Chrome, on the other hand, doesn’t let Gemini remember what was on webpages. But if you ask it to, Gemini can answer questions about your web browsing history.

It’s hard to grasp and even harder to regulate the privacy dangers that come with that level of customisation. There are things you might want an AI to remember and bring up again later, and there are things you surely don’t want it to remember, like problems in your relationship or that embarrassing medical condition you looked up at 2 a.m.

It gets complicated very quickly what Atlas will or won’t recall. OpenAI believes that memories could include things like projects you’re working on and your preferences, but not the whole contents of a page. Atlas shouldn’t remember things like government IDs, bank account numbers, addresses, passwords, medical records, and financial information. It also shouldn’t try to memorize what adult websites say.

But Lena Cohen, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that a test showed that Atlas preserved memories of signing up for “sexual and reproductive health services via Planned Parenthood Direct.” It even remembered the name of a real doctor. She remarked, “The Atlas browser’s extensive data collection could be a privacy nightmare for users.”

Atlas has a “incognito” option that doesn’t save any of your history or memories.

You can change Atlas’s memories, but it takes work. You can instruct Atlas not to remember particular URLs by typing them into the address bar. It is said that clearing your browsing history will erase memories from that time. Atlas provides you a list of its memories under settings. You can erase them one at a time or all at once. But this memory file is not the same as the one ChatGPT already has about you.

Atlas has a “incognito” option that doesn’t save any of your history or memories. But like Chrome’s mode that doesn’t really hide you from other websites or even from ChatGPT itself, it doesn’t really hide you. Companies love to say they let users choose how their data is collected. But giving people a lot of different privacy settings isn’t the same as giving them real power. A 747 has a lot of controls, but it doesn’t mean everyone can fly it.

Fry remarked, “We are using memory only to improve the features of Atlas, not for anything else.” “The way we use data here is very different from how social media companies make interest profiles.”

He also noted that OpenAI does not have an advertising business.

But Online spying can have very bad effects:

• Can governments ask OpenAI for people’s browsing history and memories?
• What if you look up things that are against the law in some states, like abortion?

The company didn’t get back to me right away.

Atlas is more cautious in one area. It doesn’t use the contents of your browser to train its AI by default, but you may switch that on if you want. (This is different from whether or not your ChatGPT chats can be utilized for training, which they can do by default.)

Atlas also adds new hazards by letting AI run your browser for you. These agents can help you discontinue subscriptions or go on shopping trips, as I wrote about lately. But AI agents still make mistakes, and giving one access to a browser with your login and payment information is a lot of power.

Fry added that Atlas enables individuals utilize agent mode in a version of the browser that has been totally wiped out. And some high-risk money-related actions only happen when the user is meant to keep an eye on what the AI is doing.

Browsers have changed from basic windows to the web into powerful tools for gathering data. Atlas might make it easier to browse the web, but only if you’re okay with letting AI into your life.