Who are AI browsers for?

OpenAI launched an AI-powered web browser this week called ChatGPT Atlas, which makes me wonder: Is it finally time to ditch Safari?

That news was on our minds as Max Zeff, Sean O’Kane and I discussed the browser landscape – including some lesser-known alternatives – on the latest episode of the Equity podcast. But it doesn’t seem like any of us will be making a big switch anytime soon.

To start, Sean noted that many companies have tried to dethrone the major browsers but have ultimately failed because they are unable to monetize the browser alone. Of course, this is less likely to be a problem for OpenAI, with its increasingly large funding rounds.

Max, meanwhile, has tried Atlas and other browsers that promise AI agents will do the work for you, and he said there’s a “small efficiency gain” at best. Other times you see the agent “clicking around a website” – is that something normal users are really clamoring for? In addition, there are significant safety risks.

Read a preview of our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Anthony: I still use Safari, but as for the search engine associated with browsers, I’ve tried experimenting with non-Google [options] because I’m just tired of seeing all this genAI stuff at the top of my search results.

I think there’s also the question: if these AI browsers take off, what does that mean for the idea of ​​the open web in general? You can still go to web pages, but I don’t think it would be crazy to suggest that a website is going to become less and less important as more and more of our browsing is controlled by these AI interfaces and chatbots.

Maximum: I think this is a big idea that people talk about a lot: What does the agent web look like? And I think it’s a fascinating question. People have tried to come up with all these solutions to work on this future [they] feeling comes.

And I think there’s some aspect of it that reminds me of previous waves of technology, which was about, “Okay, but what is the actual experience? What is the value proposition to a consumer of using one of these tools?”

And it’s just not super compelling today. I’ve tried ChatGPT Atlas and I’ve tried Comet and the most generous estimate of it is that it’s a slight efficiency gain. It makes you a little more efficient.

But most of the time I’ve tried these things, you’ll see him slowly clicking around a website, doing a task I’d probably never do in the real world. For example, I would have it look up a recipe and add all the ingredients to Instacart. I’ve never done that before. I think all the tech bros always say that example in the videos, and I’m like, “I don’t know if people do that that often.”

This is exactly the massive divide the tech industry is currently facing [saying]“We’re building all these tools for the agent web,” but why would a normal person use this? And I don’t know.

Sean: I haven’t used any of these [AI browsers] but that’s in large part because I’m still an old head when it comes to searching and browsing in general. A lot of the work I do involves searching for documents, which obviously involves browsing through various individual parts of web pages that I know, and a lot of Boolean searches on Google. Maybe one day I’ll try this one if Google really does get rid of Boolean search and it seems like that might happen at some point, but it’s not here yet.

What’s interesting to me about these AI browsers is that we’ve seen other companies try to compete in the browser space and they always lose because it’s just impossible to make money with a browser as a product. And some have tried charging for it up front, they can get by with it for a while, but ultimately it’s just not sustainable when you have to compete with Safari, Chrome or Firefox.

What’s interesting to me… is that you finally have these companies that just have infinite money, so they can keep doing it as long as they want, because they’re not really trying to make money on these things yet. That will probably happen eventually, but OpenAI doesn’t need to make money from this for the next two years; they can just put it on the market and let it take shape.