“Agentic” is the tech buzzword of the moment. The phrase describes an AI tool you can ask to perform tasks automatically on your behalf. Maybe the bot will order your favorite dish on DoorDash, or call a car for you without you needing to open the Uber app. Perhaps in a few years, AI assistants will be scheduling your meetings, or screening interviewees for a job based on your direction—though I’m not sure we’ve cracked the simple tasks just yet.
Regardless, most companies that make AI technologies are pushing these agents in some way, shape, or form—including into their AI-powered browsers. Companies like Perplexity have browsers that offer agentic features that invite you to task your AI with performing tasks on the web. Rather than shop on Amazon yourself, perhaps you can ask an AI assistant to do it. Instead of painstakingly compiling sources for a paper, maybe your bot will find them for you. That’s the gist, anyway.
However, despite the focus on agentic AI, one of the biggest AI companies in the world is shuttering its own AI browser. OpenAI has announced it will soon discontinue ChatGPT Atlas, a venture it only launched last October. The shutdown comes just months after the company also shut down Sora, its AI-generated short-form video platform, marking the second high-profile OpenAI product of 2026 to go under.
When will ChatGPT Atlas shut down?
OpenAI will officially shut down ChatGPT Atlas on Sunday, Aug. 9. While it won’t delete the browser from your devices, it may stop working as intended. OpenAI says that after this date, ChatGPT Atlas may not open, browse, or support “browser-based agentic workflows.” As such, the company encourages users to export or save all of their ChatGPT Atlas data, including bookmarks and pages.
In addition, ChatGPT Atlas won’t receive security updates going forward. That makes it especially important to stop using it after Aug. 9: While all browsers and devices that connect to the internet should be running the latest security patches as soon as they’re available, AI browsers are particularly vulnerable. Because they have agentic features, hackers can take advantage of the automated AI to trick it into performing tasks on their behalf instead of yours. A bot can’t tell the difference between your commands and a malicious prompt hidden on a website it browses. These browsers are already a security risk—ChatGPT Atlas itself had a major vulnerability at launch—but using an AI browser that is no longer supported is beyond dangerous.
What other AI browsers are there to choose from?
If you ask OpenAI, you don’t have to leave its sandbox in order to play with AI browsing features. The company is pointing users to its ChatGPT desktop app, which includes some browsing features, like multiple tabs, downloads, account login support, and “improved navigation.” To me, those sound like perks for active ChatGPT users, but not a replacement for a dedicated browser. That said, there is a feature called “Computer Use” that lets ChatGPT take over certain apps on your Mac, including your browser.
However, if you’re looking for a true ChatGPT Atlas replacement, you have options, the most notable of which is probably Perplexity Comet, one of the first agentic browsers on the market. Opera also makes its own AI browser, called Neon, if you’re already a fan of that company’s offerings. If you used Arc before it went belly-up a few years back, you might be happy to learn the company now develops an AI browser called Dia. Any of these will be a more full-featured replacement for ChatGPT Atlas than settling for the ChatGPT app.
