this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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ChatGPT's Atlas: The Browser That's Anti-Web (www.anildash.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago by sqgl@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 34 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

In the marketing materials and demonstrations of Atlas, OpenAI's team describes the browser as being able to be your "agent", performing tasks on your behalf.

But in reality, you are the agent for ChatGPT.

During setup, Atlas pushes very aggressively for you to turn on "memories" (where it tracks and stores everything you do and uses it to train an AI model about you) and to enable "Ask ChatGPT" on any website, where it's following along with you as you browse the web. By keeping the ChatGPT sidebar open while you browse, and giving it permission to look over your shoulder, OpenAI can suddenly access all kinds of things on the internet that they could never get to on their own.

Those Google Docs files that your boss said to keep confidential. The things you type into a Facebook comment box but never hit "send" on. Exactly which ex's Instagram you were creeping on. How much time you spent comparing different pairs of shoes during your lunch hour. All of those things would never show up in ChatGPT's regular method of grabbing content off the internet. Even Google wouldn't have access to that kind of data when you use their Chrome browser, and certainly not in a way that was connected to your actual identity.

But by acting as ChatGPT's agent, you can hold open the door so that the AI can now see and access all kinds of data it could never get to on its own. As publishers and content owners start to put up more effective ways of blocking the AI platforms from exploiting their content without consent, having users act as agents on behalf of ChatGPT lets them get around these systems, because site owners are never going to block their actual audience.

And while ChatGPT is following you around, it can create a complete and comprehensive surveillance profile of you — your personality, your behaviors, your private documents, your unfinished thoughts, how long you lingered on that one page before hitting the back button — at a level that the search companies and social networks of the last generation couldn't even dream of. We went from worrying about being tracked by cookies to letting an AI company control our web browser and watch everything we do. The amount of data they're gathering is unfathomable.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

During setup, Atlas pushes very aggressively for you to turn on "memories" (where it tracks and stores everything you do and uses it to train an AI model about you)

I wonder, do memories really train a model about the user? Or are they just shoved in the context window strategically? Possibly selected by a small performant model in the background based on relevance to the current context window?

Training millions of mini models on people would be really interesting, and I don’t think I’ve noticed anything saying that is happening, yet. Even tho it seems like a logical idea.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago

I'm sure it's RAG at best. There's no way I can conceive of that they're actually training individual models for each user in a performant or economical fashion.

More likely, as you said, they're just zero-shotting the relevant personal data into the context window. And honestly, I'd be a little surprised if they had a smaller model trying to evaluate relevance; a simple heuristic or basic frequency analysis algorithm would probably perform about as well and be a lot cheaper. The big final model can probably toss away the noise well enough.

[–] daggermoon@lemmy.world 30 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

Am I the only one who doesn't use any of this AI shit?

[–] kat_angstrom@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago

No, there are many of us who tried it, found it lacking, and never used it again, especially in light of the endless hype cycle. :)

[–] Cybersteel@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Everything is AI nowadays. Heck AI uses you more than you use it if you've spent any amount of time online. It's too late now though, unless you could you know what Sam Altman back in 2015.

[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

There is over 7 billions persons in the world, of course you are not the only one

[–] artyom@piefed.social 3 points 3 weeks ago

Ahaha, you're so fucking clever...

[–] amon@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

8 billion btw

[–] cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 25 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

Honestly: does anyone at this point think to themselves that using an OpenAI browser is a good idea? What does it even provide in terms of benefit over literally any alternative?

[–] Dearth@lemmy.world 25 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Nobody on this platform. But on the normie web there's probably some folks who think it's a good idea

[–] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

So many of them that it is scary. And educating them will probably often elicit the stubborn response: "I don't care, I like it, it's convenient and the errors won't kill me" (at least if their attitude towards privacy is any indication).

[–] artyom@piefed.social 4 points 3 weeks ago

Way too many people drinking the corporate koolaid and continually using and recommending this trash, despite what their own eyes show them.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The overwhelming majority of users will use whatever's preinstalled on their platform. I dunno if OpenAI can go pay some cell phone manufacturer to preinstall their browser, but if they want marketshare, I'm pretty sure that that's the only realistic route to do so.

[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Not really, Chrome has an overwhelming dominance on desktop despite not being preinstalled on any desktop operating system.

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago

Often preinstalled on prebuilts and laptops though, along with the OEMs bloat

[–] artyom@piefed.social 0 points 3 weeks ago

It is pre-installed, and in fact, the only 1 available, on ChromeOS (which is fortunately dying).

[–] Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

does anyone at this point think to themselves that (...)

Yes.

Whatever the rest of this sentence would be, the answer is "yes".

[–] hietsu@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 weeks ago

Furthermore, I’ve found the answer to this being not just ”yes” but ”yes, most of them”. I think I’ll just give up.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de -3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Honestly i dont care. 99% of people are using Chrome. This browser doesnt change anything, people were already being spied on before, now its just being done by a different horrible company.

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

you didn't even read the article... not that your other reasonoing is sound either