OpenAI Podcast — Episode 9: ChatGPT Atlas and the Next Era of Web Browsing

Date: November 13, 2025
Host: Andrew Mayne
Guests: Ben Goodyear and Darren Fisher, OpenAI

Overview

In this episode, Andrew Mayne discusses OpenAI’s new browser, ChatGPT Atlas, with Ben Goodyear and Darren Fisher—veterans of various browser teams (Netscape, Firefox, Chrome). The conversation explores why OpenAI built a browser, how AI is changing the experience of using the web, the technical and philosophical underpinnings of Atlas, and what this might mean for the future of browsing, search, and digital agents. The discussion covers Atlas’s design, unique features, integration of agentic capabilities, engineering choices, user experiences, and a glimpse into what's next.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Build a Browser Now?

• Atlas as the Next-Generation Browser:
  • "Atlas is a new kind of browser for an era of the web where people are interacting with new technology in natural language." — Ben Goodyear [00:50]
  • Central principle: Place ChatGPT "at the heart of your browser, not just an add on" to help users make sense of web content, take action, and have tasks remembered and personalized over time. [00:50–01:48]
• The "Right Time" for Agentic Browsing:
  • Advances in LLMs made rich, helpful user experiences viable—hence, the motivation for Atlas.
  • "The time is right, because it's actually how people should be starting their journey." — Darren Fisher [00:28]

2. The Evolution & Durability of Browsers

• Browsers have adapted over 30 years, still anchoring online work, learning, and exploration.
  • "Substantive work happens within the browser, happens on the Web. Don't really see that changing. If anything, I see that growing." — Darren [04:44]
• The openness and accessibility of the web means innovation like LLM integration is natural:
  • "The platform itself is amazing...there are really no gatekeepers when it comes to the web, which is a really remarkable aspect to it." — Darren [06:15–06:48]

3. Easy, Natural Interaction via AI

• Moving from URLs and manual searching to conversational intent—just tell the browser what you want.
  • "We're moving to a world where you can just tell the computer what you want." — Ben [00:32, 36:16]
• AI reduces barriers: "We'll make that computing capability much more accessible to more people who aren't necessarily experts." — Ben [09:28]

4. Agent Mode: What It Means & How It Works

• Agent Mode lets ChatGPT act on your behalf on web pages—fill in forms, review documents, automate tasks:
  • "You can just say, hey, make a pie chart with this data and it will go off and it will figure out how to use that software." — Ben [19:41]
  • "It starts moving the mouse around and doing stuff like that for you. It's pretty amazing." — Ben [19:41]
• Agent has its own workspace/tabs:
  • "When you start an agent task, it goes off and ... might need to open some additional tabs...it's accumulated some work in the background, and when it's done, then it presents it to you..." — Darren [18:33]
• Features for user control and safety: Sensitive tasks require user supervision, with a 'red stop button' for easy intervention. [25:41–26:41]

5. Atlas Architecture & Technical Choices

• Atlas is not merely a ChatGPT extension; it is architected from the ground up with ChatGPT as a core, allowing:
  • Richly integrated features (e.g., recalling what you worked on, personalized writing help). [15:36–16:44]
  • Separation between user and agent tabs for clarity and reduced clutter. [17:38–19:28]
  • Fast restarts and efficient memory—thousands of tabs possible without slowing down. [51:00–52:45]
• Built on Chromium for compatibility and extension support:
  • "Unfortunately...a lot of websites are only really designed to work with Chromium." — Darren [52:47]

6. Personalization, Memories, and Privacy

• Atlas "learns from your browsing"—better context, more personalized actions.
  • "The fact that it ... learns more about you the more you use it has been like a super popular feature of ChatGPT. With Atlas, this extends to your browsing activity...create these browser memories..." — Ben [32:03–33:15]
• Users can see and control what memories are used or turn off personalization entirely. [33:15]

7. Search, Discovery, and the Future of Browsing

• Atlas blurs lines between browser and search engine:
  • "Some of it is just the normal ChatGPT experience that people are used to, but not everybody's using chatgpt to the fullness. When it's core and central...present that to people as part of their normal journey." — Darren [33:46–35:40]
  • "Just give them one box." — Darren, describing the new unified input for both navigation and natural language queries. [40:02–41:28]
• AI can help escape the "rabbit holes" of attention-trapping websites, empowering broader discovery. [29:59–31:29]

8. Living with AI Tools: Habits, Learning, and Magic Moments

• The journey towards new habits: from typing search queries to simply describing problems or tasks.
  • "There's a bit of a journey with new technology, right? ... as you maybe explore something new, you start to see, oh, there actually is a better way." — Darren [36:54]
  • "Now when I don't have access to that ... takes longer now..." — Ben [38:02]
• Moments of delight:
  • "The very first day ... I asked it to could you add a bookmark for Amazon? And then a moment later the bookmark appeared. That was a really kind of special moment." — Andrew [35:40]

9. Practical Features and Power User Tips

• Scrolling Tabs: Allows for thousands of open tabs, efficient memory management, minimal clutter, and still searchable. Not enabled by default but beloved by power users.
  • "If you have a browser that more naturally scales to having tons and tons of tabs, certain kinds of things get unlocked." — Darren [43:24]
• Ask ChatGPT Sidebar: Real-time summaries, translations, shopping help, research, automating workflows.
  • "It's like having ChatGPT sitting on your shoulder just right there to help..." — Ben [46:24]
• Full Control Over Agent Tasks and Memory Use

10. Engineering at Scale — Why Chromium, Why Swift, Why Modular Architecture?

• Built on Chromium (with a custom "Owl" embedding) for compatibility and performance, but with a separate lightweight Atlas app (written in Swift/SwiftUI for Mac), enabling fast development, user onboarding, and parallel process management. [52:45–57:55]

11. A Long-Term Bet — Not Just an Experiment

• Firm commitment to ongoing iterative improvement, broader platform support, and a belief that agentic browsers will be foundational for how people interact with the web. [58:54–60:10]

12. Outlook: The Next Five Years and the Agentic Web

• Envisioning a future where the browser/agent handles more "toil", lets users focus on higher order work, and even agent traffic equals or surpasses that of humans. [68:02–69:49]
• Web remains the world’s open platform, and agents will connect people to content, not wall them off. [71:52–73:08]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Atlas's Core Idea:
  • "If we take ChatGPT and make it the heart of your browser ... it can help you make sense of the content ... take action ... help you become a more curious, more effective person." — Ben [00:50]
• Why Agent Mode Matters:
  • "The beauty of these AI models is that they meet technology where users are ... they can be developed for this world that was designed for humans." — Darren [10:33]
• On the Emphasis for Control:
  • "If suddenly it starts to do something you don't want it to do, you just whack that button and it stops." (About the red stop button in sensitive agent tasks.) — Ben [26:41]
• On Experience and Delight:
  • "That was like $100 a month bill that was just saved..." (on using Atlas's agent to audit a cloud bill) — Andrew [47:43]
  • "My wife loves it. This is not a lie, an exaggeration...She says, 'I can't stop thinking about ChatGPT Atlas.'" — Andrew [61:43]
• On the Power of Simpler Interfaces:
  • "Just give them one box. ... And that's become the industry standard." (on consolidating URL and search boxes, now for LLM queries) — Darren [40:02]
• On Personalization and Memory:
  • "Now this search experience has so much more context about what matters to you." — Darren [33:00]
• On the Vision for the Future:
  • "Maybe the less appetizing part of the work, the more ... toil ... the agent can do for you...so you can be focused on the things you want." — Ben [68:02]
• On Power User Features:
  • "Definitely the scrolling tabs feature is a favorite for both of us." — Ben [73:15]

Important Segment Timestamps

• Atlas, its purpose, and why now: [00:45–03:40]
• Browsers then & now; AI and the web: [04:04–09:28]
• Agent Mode & Integration: [15:36–22:00]
• Atlas technical architecture: [23:38–27:39]
• Agent mode control and privacy: [25:41–29:59]
• Personalization, memories, and privacy controls: [32:03–33:29]
• Is Atlas a search engine? [33:29–35:40]
• Interface choices and one-box vision: [40:02–41:28]
• Power user features (scrolling tabs, Ask ChatGPT): [41:28–46:59]
• Why Chromium, architectural choices: [52:45–58:38]
• Long-term commitment to Atlas: [58:54–62:05]
• Vision for the agentic web (5+ years): [68:02–73:08]
• Final power user tips: [73:15–73:36]

Conclusion

ChatGPT Atlas represents a major shift in how browser technology can augment, automate, and personalize the web experience, leveraging LLMs not as an add-on, but as the browser's core. Its design enables both immediate productivity gains and serves as a proving ground for a future where digital agents interact with the web just like, or even for, us. The episode provides technical insight, user scenarios, and vision for a web where telling the computer what we want—in natural language—is the new normal.