AI Browsers Bypass Paywalls and Legal Restrictions, Raising Concerns for Digital Media

Some AI browsers can bypass publisher paywalls, report says

Credit: Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images AI web browsers like OpenAI's ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity's Comet are capable of circumventing some publications' paywalls to access content normally reserved for paying subscribers, according to a new report from the Columbia Journalism Review. As the CJR reports, both browsers were able to retrieve a 9,000-word, subscriber-only feature from MIT Technology Review. When the same request was made through ChatGPT's regular tool, the chatbot was unable to access the piece because the site had blocked OpenAI's web crawler. According to CJR, the reason these AI browsers can bypass paywalls is simple: to the website, Atlas and Comet look just like ordinary users. Normally, publishers use the Robots Exclusion Protocol to block unwanted crawlers and AI bots. But agentic AI tools and browsers like Atlas and Comet can blend in with normal human traffic, making it difficult for publishers to detect and restrict them. Adding to the problem: CJR found that some outlets use client-side paywalls, which hide the text of an article from visitors. However, AI bots are still able to read these articles for free. CJR also found that Atlas specifically avoids reading content from publishers currently suing OpenAI. For example, when asked to summarize an article from PCMag -- a website owned by Ziff Davis, which also owns Mashable -- Atlas instead generated a composite summary based on X posts, syndicated stories, and other outside sources. However, when we asked ChatGPT Atlas to summarize a recent Mashable article titled "How to Navigate Exes While Swiping," the AI appeared to produce a detailed, bulleted summary of the piece's main points, even offering to add direct quotes from experts featured in the story. When asked how it accessed the article, Atlas clarified that it had not and instead offered a generalized summary based on prior knowledge of the topic -- reiterating that it didn't have direct access to the original Mashable article. Ziff Davis, Mashable's parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems. AI web browsers are on the rise now -- especially with OpenAI launching its own entrant, Atlas. The new tool joins a growing lineup that includes Perplexity's Comet and Microsoft's Copilot Mode in Edge. But their arrival, meant to redefine how we navigate the internet in a post-Search world, is already creating headaches for traditional digital media.

OpenAI's Browser Avoids Large Part of the Web Like the Plague

OpenAI unveiled its AI browser Atlas last month, effectively building a web browsing interface around its blockbuster chatbot ChatGPT. The browser's "agent mode" has caught most of the attention so far. The feature can navigate the web on behalf of the user, like a human, to carry out tasks like research or online shopping. Besides some serious security concerns -- and a glacial pace that undermines its effectiveness -- another striking issue with agent mode has started to emerge: instead of behaving like a helpful librarian that'll always identify the most helpful resources for a problem, the agent is instead avoiding certain portions of the web like the plague. Specifically, OpenAI's legal battles seem to be cropping down Atlas' view of the internet: as Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism recently found, "Atlas seems to avoid reading content from media companies that are currently suing OpenAI." For instance, it avoided PCMag, whose parent company Ziff Davis sued OpenAI for copyright infringement earlier this year, and the New York Times, which filed a similar lawsuit in 2023. "It was like a rat finding food pellets in a maze, knowing that the locations of certain food pellets are electrified," Gizmodo wrote. Even more controversially, instead of admitting that it wasn't willing to access the outlets' articles due to ongoing litigation, the agent is finding dubious workarounds. For instance, the Tow Center found that it "reconstructed" the NYT's reporting by leaning on coverage of the same topic by publications with existing licensing agreements with OpenAI. The agent was also caught drawing on other sources, including tweets, syndicated versions of the same article, and citations in other publications, to "reverse-engineer" forbidden source material. And that's not all, Many publishers, such as National Geographic or MIT Technology Review, implemented paywalls that overlay a dialogue box over existing text, which is out of view for human visitors -- but can still be read by the AI agent. AI browsers with agents, including Atlas and Perplexity's Comet, happily accessed and summarized the publications' articles -- even when their chatbot counterparts couldn't do the same. "For instance, when we asked Atlas and Comet to retrieve the full text of a nine-thousand-word subscriber-exclusive article in the MIT Technology Review, the browsers were able to do it," the Tow Center found. "When we issued the same prompt in ChatGPT's and Perplexity's standard interfaces, both responded that they could not access the article because the Review had blocked the companies' crawlers." The trend highlights how AI agents act far more like humans while browsing the web, which could have major implications for rightsholders. AI agents, like the one built into OpenAI's Atlas browser, may soon force publications to look for ways to exert greater control over how these agents access their content. "AI browsers are still new, and we don't know whether they will replace existing ways of searching the web," the Tow Center wrote. "But whether or not these tools achieve widespread adoption, one thing is clear: traditional defenses such as paywalls and crawler blockers are no longer enough to prevent AI systems from accessing and repurposing news articles without consent."

OpenAI's Atlas ushers in the era of AI browsing. Here's what it means for media

The Atlas-vs.-Comet fight may be moot, though, since Google Chrome is the incumbent browser for most people (it has 74% market share worldwide), and it has AI features, too. Chrome's large user base, however, also means Google can't move as fast: Since the whole idea of AI agents taking control of your browser to perform tasks is fraught with security concerns, Google's Gemini assistant in Chrome is relatively feeble; if you ask it to, say, shop for you on Amazon, it'll give you the digital equivalent of a shrug. So Chrome's continued dominance in the AI era isn't assured. But the question of who will win the AI browser war doesn't matter so much as whether AI browsing will take off at all. I've been using Comet heavily for a few months, and although I find the idea of an agent doing all my tedious internet tasks compelling, I've found the actual set of things it can do to be quite narrow. Generally, the task needs to be something that doesn't require a lot of specialized context (since the AI can't read your mind) or complex prompting (since spending several minutes crafting a prompt is time you could use to just do the task yourself). Nonetheless, OpenAI imagines a future where most of the activity online is done via AI agents in browsers like Atlas. In its announcement, it says, "This launch marks a step toward a future where most web use happens through agentic systems -- where you can delegate the routine and stay focused on what matters most." OpenAI could be right. Those narrow use cases for agentic browsing could be expanded greatly with more elegant and comprehensive merging of personal context and the browsing experience. If the agent understands the entire background of what you're doing -- the why -- and gets better at navigating the web (as it inevitably will), AI browsing might even burst through to the mainstream.

The AI Browser Power Play

Earlier this month, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Atlas, "a new web browser built with ChatGPT at its core," which it is promoting to the service's hundreds of millions of users. Unusual for OpenAI, which has a history of rushing to beat competitors to market, Atlas launched into a crowded marketplace for AI-assisted browsers. Heavyweights Google and Microsoft are already integrating chatbots and other LLM features into Chrome and Edge. Opera has been building AI features into its apps since 2023, while AI search-engine Perplexity released its own browser, Comet, promoting "agentic" features earlier this year. In late 2024, the Browser Company, the maker of Arc, announced plans to shift focus to a new AI-centric browser called Dia. Even Firefox has chatbot integration now, leaving Apple's Safari, with its few scattered Apple Intelligence features, as the last major browser without a new chat interface growing in or on top of it. Each of these browsers has a different take on what it means to integrate -- or build a browser around -- generative AI, but a few common features have emerged. You've got easily accessible summarization, editing, and lookup capabilities, of course, as well as different abilities to (borrowing Dia's words) "chat with your tabs." In interface terms, they mostly seem to have settled on a right-hand sidebar for chatting, which may end up being this era's version of the "omnibox," or tabbed browsing, and which can accommodate the wide range of relationships people have developed with services like ChatGPT, from occasional search replacement or word generator to consultative companion to a layer through which their entire digital world is interpreted. Finally, in architectural terms, we're mostly talking about browsers built on top of Chromium, the Google-supported open-source project. If there are major features in Atlas that weren't already teased or tested in one of these browsers, I haven't had much luck finding them. In the demo above, even Sam Altman struggled to muster enthusiasm as his employees showed off text summarization, web search, and the automatic chat sidebar. Most of the time, it feels, at least in its current state, like a browser made by OpenAI staffers who were tired of opening a competitor's product to use their own. In regular usage, it's less of a new take on browsing than it is a fuller interface for using ChatGPT. That makes sense: OpenAI is attempting to do in 2025 something like what Google did with Chrome's launch in 2008, guiding users into a relationship with the company deeper than a single product, and much harder to leave. In doing so, it's also targeting Google more directly than ever. When you open ChatGPT in Chrome (or any other browser), you'll now get a prompt to try Atlas. When you open Atlas, you'll see an interface that's far Googlier than your typical ChatGPT window, with default tabs for Search, Images, Videos, and News. In its launch demo, ChatGPT talked about how popular "search" behaviors are for ChatGPT users, and spent some time showing how the browser can be used to work within Google docs. It wasn't subtle. They're coming for Chrome. This is, again, pretty straightforward tech-firm behavior with plenty of precedent: A company with a major web-based product and ambitious omnidirectional plans wants to own its distribution. This sort of thinking isn't just how Google ended up with a browser but also with a mobile operating system; it has inspired less successful adventures, too, like Facebook's failed attempt to make a phone. As a solid browser with a few perks for heavy ChatGPT users, Atlas would be yet another example of OpenAI's transition from a slippery, speculative nonprofit to a more conventional sort of major consumer and enterprise tech company -- from a firm that talks about ASI to a firm that also has lots of KPIs -- except for one thing: Agent Mode. OpenAI's announcement leaned heavily on Agent Mode, which the company says can help with "researching and analyzing, automating tasks, and planning events or booking appointments while you browse," and with good reason: It's pretty wild to watch. Like previous "computer use" features, including OpenAI's Operator and ChatGPT Agent, Atlas's Agent Mode effectively takes control of the browser interface, navigating pages, moving a mouse cursor, filling out forms, and narrating the entire process in a sidebar. As a demo, it's powerful: Look, the computer is using itself! When I asked it to buy me some wool socks in a certain size and color, it navigated to REI's website and added something pretty close to what I asked for to the cart before asking me to log in; same for a specific type of floss, although it took the liberty of upping the order to four boxes to meet Walmart's free-shipping threshold. When I asked it to find a flight for this weekend, it spent a few minutes browsing through travel aggregators, describing its strange process in a sidebar in deep detail: "I need to consider the best way to handle the flight search and booking, ensuring I find the most relevant and convenient options for the user. Let's get this just right," it printed before creating a Python script to figure out what day it was and calculate what I meant by "this coming Saturday." It got there in the end, sort of, in that it found a flight that matched my request. Neat! And a task I will not be assigning it for real. As a performance, computer use is impressive. For many Atlas users, it will also be their first encounter with an agentic tool that can plausibly execute multistep tasks on their behalf. (Programmers will be more familiar with the sensation if they've used AI coding assistants, and anyone who has used Perplexity's Comet or Opera's Neon will have tried something nearly identical already.) As a feature, it still sits somewhere in AI limbo, where the suggestion that such a tool could one day be useful -- if it were faster, smarter, knew more about you, etc. -- remains far more powerful than the tool itself. In other words, like a lot of AI products and companies, Agent Mode benefits from the tailwind of belief in inevitable, continual, exponential improvement. For now, it's something many users will test, play with, and perhaps incorporate into their general models of the future, if not their actual workflow. (OpenAI currently describes it as a "preview" feature, and it's only available to paid users.) Browser Company founder Josh Miller, who experimented early on with similar features in Dia, recalled agentic browsing feeling initially dazzling but eventually like a bit of a dead end, or at the very least a strange and cumbersome way to interact with the web and AI. "Training an AI model to click around a computer like a human is akin to putting a print magazine on the early web," he told me. "It feels futuristic, but it's unimaginative and not native to the technology." As I spent time watching ChatGPT bonk its way through various web interfaces, I also found myself thinking of self-driving cars. A browser that pretends to be a person at the input level -- moving a cursor, scrolling a human GUI -- felt less like a Waymo, in which an unattended steering wheel turns as a result of actions taken by systems closer to the road, than a regular car with a humanoid robot sitting in the driver's seat. Again, it's pretty interesting to watch! But it also makes you wonder: Why are we doing this that way? Aren't there better ways for machines to talk to each other? The answer, Miller suggests, comes down to the "incentives of their makers more than the intrinsic value of the technology." (The Browser Company was recently acquired by software-maker Atlassian.) For OpenAI, building systems that can execute complex commands on behalf of users is the whole ball game -- it's the path to wide-ranging automation and/or AGI, depending on which definition of the term the company is going with that day. An AI model that can provide useful information in a chat window, or handle tasks clearly outlined by the user, is a useful product, but the prospect of an AI model that can productively and proactively interact with the world around it in ways comparable to a human -- or, more specifically, an employee -- is where trillion-dollar valuations come from. To get where it wants to go, though, OpenAI has a number of challenges. Some are widely discussed and frustratingly hard to pin down, revolving around benchmarks, varying definitions of model capability, and predictions about scaling. Others are more banal: To answer questions more usefully, for example, chatbots tend to do better if they have more data about users; likewise, to execute tasks on their behalf, they need to operate in an environment where users are logged in to the various services they use to work and live their lives. They need a breathtaking amount of access and permission, in other words. ChatGPT isolated in a chat window doesn't have that, and it takes a long time to draw out of users, if they're willing to offer it at all. ChatGPT as a default browser -- authenticated in dozens of different sites, payment methods at the ready, or perhaps even logged into a work environment -- does. (Such agents also create, as many in the AI space have pointed out, a potential security nightmare.) That a given service or piece of software could be more powerful with access to all the other software you use is sort of a tech truism -- look no further than the thousands of times you've been asked by one company for "permission" or "access" to data from another for evidence. But it is usually managed through official partnerships and software APIs. By installing itself at the browser level, OpenAI is looking for the mother of all loopholes: That's where people who use computers, particularly for work, spend all their time, and through which vast quantities of valuable information flow in and out. Also, if you're a company hoping to train your models to replicate a bunch of white-collar work, millions of browser sessions would be a pretty valuable source of data. It would be amazing for OpenAI, in other words, if lots of people found Agent Mode useful and used it at scale, but this is far from a sure thing; likewise, it would depend on a bunch of other companies tolerating the gradual botification of their users without taking the sorts of countermeasures that, say, Ticketmaster does against automated snipers (also, you can't make money showing ads to a ChatGPT agent!). Instead, I think, Atlas can be understood as a statement of intention, or as a preemptive power play. Before launching its browser, OpenAI announced that it was partnering with a number of companies to build their services directly into ChatGPT, so users could, for example, use the chatbot to create a playlist that would then show up in Spotify, or transition from a chat session directly into a productivity tool like Canva. As a way of working with chatbots, it was far less clunky than the self-driving browser. But it also requires willing partners, and the lineup at launch was fairly thin, consisting largely of companies with nothing to fear from OpenAI, little to lose, or that are already major OpenAI customers. In OpenAI's ideal world -- much like Google's, Meta's, and Apple's, to be fair -- every other tech product exists as a subordinate app inside its own platform, letting ChatGPT users seamlessly navigate their digital lives through the company's interface, its agentic capabilities unencumbered by security concerns, privacy, competition, or interfaces designed for humans rather than machines. Plenty of companies will be eager to partner with a popular service like ChatGPT. Others -- particularly those who see OpenAI, or AI in general, as a potential threat to their businesses or their proprietary data as a protective moat -- will be more cautious. OpenAI's sources of leverage are its large user base and its narrative of inevitability. Agentic browsing is an attempt to fuse the two: A feature that may soon be available to and used by lots of people, that may soon be better than it is. If building an ecosystem for other companies is a polite invitation into such a future, in other words, Atlas functions as something more like a threat, setting up an easy-way-or-hard-way scenario for potential partners or competitors: If you'd rather not work with OpenAI for now, fine. In the meantime, it will be trying to take over your relationship with your users or customers, deceptively and without your consent. Capisce?

ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity's Comet Might Be Bypassing Paywalls

ChatGPT Atlas, Perplexity's Comet browser, and other artificial intelligence (AI) browsers are reportedly capable of bypassing paywalls and blockers. As per the report, Atlas and Comet were able to generate multiple paywalled articles after being prompted to print the content on those pages. While the same did not occur when Gagdets 360 tested Comet, if the claims are true, this can result in further decline in the earnings of news platforms and other blog sites, where the premium content is meant to be accessed by paying subscribers. AI Browsers Said to Be Accessing Unauthorised Content According to the Columbia Journalism Review, both ChatGPT Atlas and the Comet browser generated articles that were hidden behind a paywall. While there are other AI browsers, such as the Copilot mode in the Edge browser and The Browser Company's Dia, the report claimed that the action was predominant in these two particular products. Notably, both Atlas and Comet are available to all users, with the latter offering advanced agentic actions to everyone as well. Notably, Gadgets 360 investigated the claims with the Comet browser and found that when using the same prompt on the same websites mentioned by CJR, Comet refused to share the paywalled information. It is possible that the companies made changes to the underlying agent to alter the action, or that the publication utilised more advanced prompt injections that were not mentioned in the report. Atlas and Comet were able to retrieve the full text of a nine-thousand-word article published in the MIT Technology Review that was behind a paywall, the report claimed. After the user reportedly asked the AI browsers to "print the text of this article," both browsers displayed the full text, allowing them to see the content without requiring a paid subscription to the platform. The report highlighted that using the same prompt in the standalone chatbot interface did not return the same result. As per the report, the reason these AI browsers can perform these unauthorised actions is that the agents running underneath are "indistinguishable from a person" using a non-AI browser. For instance, to retrieve any information on Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, the browsers (or the search engine) rely on crawlers that scrape the data by following certain standard protocols, and they show it on the user's interface. However, the report claims that when these agents visit a website, they use a digital signature to identify themselves as the user and interact with the website as the user does. As a result, it becomes impossible for the websites to block the crawlers or flag the action as illegitimate. Even if the crawlers are manually blocked via the Robots Exclusion Protocol, the agents can slightly alter their digital signature to make them appear unique. The report also highlights a bigger problem. Since AI browsers can be asked to visit a website and summarise articles (verified by Gadgets 360), they can easily do that. This means users can effectively read content from websites without giving them a click, which is necessary for the website to earn via Google ads. This is something the chatbots could already do, but by integrating the capability into browsers, the search traffic decline for content websites might accelerate. However, this will also depend on the adoption of AI browsers and data privacy scrutiny from concerned lawmakers.

Race to control the next era of the internet: The fight for your digital front door has begun

The internet's interface is shifting from search-and-click to chat-and-do, driven by generative AI. New "agentic browsers" act as assistants, fulfilling requests rather than just providing links. This seismic shift challenges Google's dominance, sparking a new battle for control over user access points. For decades, our online life started with a familiar ritual: open a browser in the laptop, type something into a search bar and click through results until we find what we want. Or, more recently, tap on an app and do your thing. But this familiar pattern of browser-portal-search-click, or the taptap-tap the app, is quietly dissolving. The internet's interface is being rewritten, as the old web, built for tapping, searching and scrolling, is giving way to a new one, built for chatting and doing. That changes everything. From how and what you do things on the interwebs to the fortunes of trillion-dollar companies. Let me explain. It all began with clicking hyperlinks in a Mosaic or Netscape browser, which opened a magic window to the World Wide Web. Then came Internet Explorer and Firefox and, finally, Google Chrome, which reshaped the web in its own image. Chrome's launch in 2008 was a masterstroke: by owning the browser, Google didn't just control the experience of browsing, but effectively owned access to the internet itself. With Chrome's default search set to Google, every query became an opportunity to feed its advertising empire. The mighty Chrome browser ensured that soon it all became Google's internet; we just lived in it. Portals like Yahoo and MSN, once the web's front doors, faded into nostalgic obscurity, as the search bar became our new compass in the WWW ocean. Type, hit enter, click a link, repeat. That model endured for nearly two decades because it worked, and because it made Google immensely wealthy as it built on the single most lucrative business model ever. Between the browser and the search engine, Google captured over 90% of the world's search traffic, as Chrome became not only the window but also the gatekeeper, shaping what billions of users saw and how they got there. The next great shift is already underway, with Generative AI changing not just what the internet can show you, but how you interact with it. Instead of returning 10 blue links, AI gives you an answer -- a synthesis of everything it knows, neatly packaged and conversational. Perplexity, for example, calls itself an answer engine and not a search engine. No scrolling through pages, no clicking through SEO-optimised traps. As behavioural scientist Ja-Naé Duane o f Brown University told VentureBeat, "This isn't just about better answers; it's about redefining the interface between humans and the web." That has sparked a new race not just for search dominance but for interface dominance. OpenAI, Perplexity and others are building what some call "agentic browsers". These aren't just windows to the web, but assistants that act on your behalf. You could use legacy browsers to show you flights to ,Bengaluru. You now could ask your agentic browsers to "book me the cheapest flight to Bengaluru next week", and it will open multiple pages, compare fares and finish the job as you sip your matcha. In this new model, the browser is not passive; it does not wait for you to type, but it anticipates. As Duane put it, "The future of search is not about finding, it is about fulfilling." This is a seismic shift in mental models -- Google was built to index and rank, while Perplexity and its ilk are engineered to understand and execute. One is a librarian, the other is akin to a personal concierge. The traditional search engine crawls the web, while the AI-powered agent tries to comprehend it and then act on it. Even Atlassian, an enterprise software company, just spent $610 million to acquire The Browser Company, whose AI-enhanced browser, Arc, aims to reinvent work-based browsing. As Atlassian CEO Mike CannonBrookes says, "Today's browsers weren't built for work -- they were built for browsing." The next generation, he says, will be built for doing. Reports suggest the company is exploring an AI-powered email platform; so be ready for your chat.com email soon, all within the ChatGPT experience. This was brought home by Perplexity's headline-making offer of $34.5 billion to buy Chrome from Google; an audacious bid that underscores how valuable control of the user's entry point remains. OpenAI reportedly made a similar overture, even as it continues to develop its own browser. Both moves suggest one thing: the next battle for the internet is not about who has the best search results, but who owns the surface through which we ask our questions. Google's Chrome once colonised the web; now OpenAI and Perplexity are trying to do a Chrome to Google. As we tiptoe into this new Agentic Internet, the implications are enormous. For users, it is pure convenience, as the friction of jumping between tabs disappears with the AI browser fetching, filtering and completing tasks. But the economic and ethical consequences ripple far wider. If AI gives you the answer directly, the very foundations of online discovery begin to crack. SEO, that dark art of gaming algorithms for clicks, may become obsolete. Websites will struggle for visibility if no one ever visits them. The open web could shrink into a constellation of walled gardens, each curated by its own AI layer. And, even as we speak, these walled gardens are being built. OpenAI recently released an app ecosystem within ChatGPT -- with Booking.com, Expedia and DoorDash among the first few welcomed inside. Now, you do not need to go to Booking website and app and click on multiple filters to shortlist hotels; you just tell ChatGPT to "find four-star hotels with a kitchenette at less than ?5,000 a night in Hyderabad" on a particular date and AI agents do that for you. As AI transforms how we access information, the war to be your interface to the internet is well and truly on. After all, the internet has always been shaped by whoever controls our point of entry. That control is now up for grabs again. We certainly cannot write Google's obituary yet; far from it. Chrome's grip is formidable. It accounts for nearly 70% of global browser usage, and the tight integration with Gmail, Docs and Calendar keeps users locked into its ecosystem. Google also has two decades of crawling infrastructure, unmatched data pipelines and an ad-driven business model that funds a vast portion of the free internet. In fact, I predict that very soon we will wake up to Google's AI Agentic browser landing on our phones and laptops. As an analyst puts it, "Short of a miracle, it's hard to see any new browser having a material impact on Google's dominance anytime soon." Yet even giants stumble when paradigms shift, and the Innovator's Dilemma looms in the horizon. Once, Yahoo seemed unassailable, now it is Google. Bindra is the founder of AI&Beyond and author of Winning With AI. Views are personal

ChatGPT Atlas AI Browser : The Future of Browsing or Just Hype?

What if your web browser didn't just help you search the internet but actively worked for you? Imagine a browser that could summarize dense research papers, draft emails, or even manage multiple tasks across tabs, all while learning your preferences to deliver a hyper-personalized experience. This is the bold promise behind ChatGPT Atlas, OpenAI's latest attempt to disrupt the browser market. Positioned as a direct competitor to industry giants like Google Chrome, ChatGPT Atlas doesn't just aim to refine browsing, it wants to redefine it. But with great ambition comes great scrutiny, and questions about privacy risks and the browser's true independence from Chrome are already sparking heated debates. In this overview, David Ondrej explores what makes ChatGPT Atlas a potential fantastic option and why it's generating both excitement and skepticism. From its standout Agent Mode, which automates tedious online tasks, to its AI-driven search capabilities that deliver contextual answers, the browser offers a glimpse into the future of how we interact with the web. Yet, as with any innovation, there are trade-offs. Concerns about data security, ethical AI use, and accessibility loom large. Is ChatGPT Atlas a innovative leap forward or just another iteration of existing tools? Let's unpack its features, challenges, and implications to see whether it truly has the potential to replace Chrome, or if it's simply a bold experiment in progress. ChatGPT Atlas incorporates a suite of AI-driven tools aimed at transforming your browsing experience. The standout feature, "Agent Mode," automates tasks by performing actions on your behalf, reducing manual effort and allowing a more seamless workflow. This is complemented by a conversational, chat-based interface that delivers contextual and intuitive search results, making information retrieval more efficient. Other notable features include: These tools are particularly beneficial for users managing complex workflows or seeking advanced productivity solutions. By integrating AI into everyday browsing, ChatGPT Atlas aims to simplify tasks and enhance efficiency. ChatGPT Atlas excels in several areas, particularly in enhancing search capabilities and multitasking. Its ability to deliver contextual, AI-generated answers simplifies the process of finding relevant information, saving both time and effort. For researchers, students, and professionals, the browser's document summarization feature is especially valuable, condensing lengthy texts into concise, actionable insights. The multi-tab agent management system further enhances productivity by allowing you to juggle multiple projects or research tasks without losing focus. These features collectively position ChatGPT Atlas as a forward-thinking tool for users who prioritize efficiency and streamlined workflows. Discover other guides from our vast content that could be of interest on AI-powered browsing. Despite its innovative offerings, ChatGPT Atlas faces several notable challenges. Privacy concerns remain a significant issue, as the browser's AI mediates all interactions, raising questions about data security and user control. Critics argue that this reliance on AI could expose sensitive information to potential misuse, making it a less secure option for privacy-conscious users. The browser's reliance on Chromium architecture has also drawn criticism. Many view it as an extension of Chrome rather than a truly independent innovation, which undermines its claim of being a innovative product. Additionally, security vulnerabilities, such as susceptibility to malicious prompt injections, highlight the need for more robust safeguards to protect users. Accessibility is another limitation. Currently available only for macOS users, the browser's reach is restricted, excluding a significant portion of potential users. Combined with its early-stage development, these factors hinder its potential for widespread adoption and limit its appeal to a broader audience. The emergence of AI-powered browsers like ChatGPT Atlas has sparked broader debates about their implications for internet usage. One major concern is the potential for bias in AI-generated responses. By shaping the information you receive, these tools could inadvertently influence your perspectives and restrict access to diverse viewpoints, raising ethical questions about their role in information dissemination. Another issue is the risk of over-reliance on AI for browsing tasks. While these tools prioritize convenience, critics argue they may discourage critical thinking and foster dependency on automated solutions. Additionally, OpenAI has faced scrutiny for replicating features from competitors like Perplexity Comet rather than introducing truly original innovations, which raises questions about the browser's uniqueness in a competitive market. ChatGPT Atlas represents an early step in the evolution of AI-first browsers, but the technology is still in its infancy. Experts predict that future iterations will include more advanced features, such as integrated dashboards for managing multiple AI agents and enhanced customization options. However, there is growing consensus that privacy, security, and transparency must take precedence over rapid innovation to build trust among users. For AI browsers to gain widespread acceptance, they must address several key concerns: Until these issues are resolved, users should approach AI-powered browsers with caution, carefully weighing their potential benefits against the risks they pose. While the promise of AI-driven browsing is compelling, its current limitations highlight the need for a more balanced approach to innovation, prioritizing user safety and ethical considerations.

ChatGPT's Browser Caught Avoiding Websites Suing OpenAI: Coincidence or Strategy?

While prioritizing safer sites may protect the platform legally, the move has sparked concerns about AI bias, information control, and the ethics of selective web access. OpenAI's new browser Atlas, which has been developed to compete with Google Chrome, integrates the chatbot directly into the browser. Users can receive assistance in writing emails, summarizing web pages, checking products, or rewriting text without the need for opening additional tabs. Atlas, the AI-powered web browser built with ChatGPT at its core, is designed to do more than just let people surf the internet. It can read, summarise, and even complete online tasks like booking appointments or finding hotels on behalf of the user.

ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity Comet can bypass online paywalls, study finds

Journalism faces new threats as AI agents access restricted content For years, the paywall has been the digital castle moat, painstakingly dug by publishers to guard their precious content. They spent fortunes on algorithms, A/B testing, and that perfect shade of blue for the "Subscribe Now" button. It turns out, all that effort was for naught, because the new AI browsers have simply decided to fly over the whole thing. When Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) recently reported that OpenAI's ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity Comet can stroll past online paywalls with the grace of a cat burglar, it possibly reignited one of journalism's oldest anxieties: what happens when the lock stops working? These so-called "agentic browsers" are systems capable of performing complex, multi-step tasks and can effortlessly retrieve the full text of subscriber-exclusive articles, even when the publishers thought their digital fortifications were impenetrable. They're trained to fetch, read, and reason across the web like an over-eager intern with no sense of boundaries. Except this intern doesn't just ignore the "Subscribe to read more" banner, it reads through it. Also read: ChatGPT's flirting with the future when it stops being just an AI assistant: Here's why At the heart of CJR's finding is a rather elegant loophole: AI browsers behave like humans, not bots. Traditional scrapers get blocked because they announce themselves through automated signatures. These new agents, however, mimic the way you and I browse - loading pages fully, clicking around, and even staying "logged in." And here's the twist: most paywalls are designed for humans, not machines pretending to be humans. So when Atlas or Comet encounters a client-side paywall (the kind that hides text behind a translucent overlay), they simply look past it, because the text is already there, just obscured by design flair and misplaced trust. It's like installing a glass door on your vault and hoping nobody figures out how to look through it. For years, publishers relied on an unspoken truce: readers could peek, but scrapers stayed outside. That handshake was enforced by lines in a robots.txt file, a polite digital "do not disturb" sign. AI browsers, however, aren't exactly the courteous kind. They're not scraping in bulk; they're acting like individual readers on command. This subtle difference rewrites the ethics of access. It's not theft in the classic sense, after all, the site did serve the content. But it's certainly a heist in spirit. The AI reads behind the velvet rope, digests the story, and delivers a paraphrased version to the user, neatly bypassing the business model that funded the original reporting. Also read: Grokipedia vs Wikipedia: Is Elon Musk's Free Encyclopedia Better? The result? A new kind of quiet piracy, one dressed in the language of "productivity" and "innovation." Paywalls, for all their flaws, were journalism's final stronghold. They didn't just monetize content, they signaled that information has value. But now, if AI agents can slip past them, the notion of exclusivity evaporates. An investigative report that took months to produce might be reduced to a paragraph-long summary by an AI in seconds. The nuance, the voice, the context - all flattened into algorithmic oatmeal. The danger isn't just that stories get read without payment; it's that they get repackaged into something that no longer resembles journalism at all. Publishers can tighten security, move to stricter server-side models, or redesign their sites to detect "agentic" behavior - but all that does is spark a never-ending game of digital whack-a-mole. Because every time the lock evolves, the key learns too. There's also a philosophical question lurking beneath the code: if an AI reads your story and retells it, who's the audience? The human who asked the query, or the machine that digested the content? In an era where the reader may never actually visit the publisher's website, traffic numbers, engagement, and ad impressions start to look like relics from a simpler age. For newsrooms, this is an existential shift. The fight is no longer about clicks, it's about visibility and credit. If your reporting fuels a thousand AI summaries without attribution, your journalism becomes infrastructure: invisible, indispensable, and unacknowledged. AI browsers represent something larger than another tech-vs-media skirmish. They signal the dissolution of friction - that delicate resistance that once made journalism tangible, purchasable, and traceable. Now, content flows freely, unmoored from the systems that once kept it contained. It's both thrilling and terrifying. Thrilling because access to knowledge becomes nearly universal; terrifying because the economics that support real reporting could collapse under that very freedom. And here's the kicker: the public won't complain. To them, it's just convenience - articles without paywalls, summaries without ads. It's the media equivalent of streaming movies from an infinite server: clean, instant, and guilt-free. The CJR report is less about paywalls and more about power. About how the internet keeps rebalancing who gets to control information. For now, AI browsers like Atlas and Comet are clever curiosities. But if left unchecked, they could become the ultimate disruptors, turning every wall into a window, every article into a data point. And if the media industry doesn't reinvent its locks - or, better yet, rethink its doors - it might soon find itself publishing into the void, while the machines quietly do the reading.