OpenAI’s Atlas Sparks AI Browser Race, but Security Risks Persist

Once seen as a mature, slow-moving category, the browser is fast becoming the next frontier for artificial intelligence (AI) where search, chat and automation converge. The launch has triggered a wave of rival products and upgrades, from AI-native challengers like Comet and Arc to new features in Chrome, Edge and Opera, all aiming to rival OpenAI’s advancements.

According to OpenAI, as reported by PYMNTS, Atlas “brings ChatGPT anywhere across the web,” allowing users to summarize pages, extract insights, and complete tasks without leaving a tab. The Financial Times called the launch “the next step in OpenAI’s consumer strategy,” integrating its reasoning capabilities into everyday web interactions.

The launch positions OpenAI against Google Chrome and Apple Safari while joining a rapidly growing cohort of AI-native browsers, including Perplexity AI’s Comet. Launched earlier this year in July, the Comet browser is almost identical to Atlas. The company is also in talks to pre-install Comet on mobile devices.

Even the incumbents are moving quickly to infuse AI into the browsing experience. Google has integrated its Gemini assistant directly into Chrome, allowing users to summarize pages and ask questions in AI mode. Microsoft introduced a new batch of Copilot features in Edge, which the company now markets as “your AI browser.” Bloomberg noted that it landed just days after OpenAI’s Atlas launch, widely seen as Microsoft’s response to OpenAI’s expanding footprint into everyday web use.

At the same time, new challengers continue to crowd the field. Opera’s Aria AI browser offers an integrated assistant that can generate images, summarize web content and respond to voice prompts.

The space is also consolidating fast. Atlassian recently acquired The Browser Company, the creator of Arc, for about $610 million in cash, and has rebranded its new AI-first browser as Dia, designed specifically for workplace use. The company said traditional browsers “weren’t built for work” and that Dia will serve as a central hub for SaaS applications, tabs and collaboration tools.

Are AI Browsers Solving a Problem?

For users, the promise of AI browsers lies in efficiency. Instead of opening multiple tabs or apps, an AI browser can summarize research, generate emails or compare products on command. But it remains unclear whether this technology delivers measurable gains. So far, many users and observers suggest the experience feels more like a glorified search engine with extra steps than a transformative workflow.

The larger question is whether AI browsers solve any real problem. Do users truly need a new interface for the web, or just better tools within the ones they already use? Early feedback suggests limited gains; the promised “hands-free” experience still demands oversight, with users spending nearly as much time correcting or verifying results as they save through automation.

Ben Colman, CEO of Reality Defender, questioned whether consumers need a standalone AI browser at all. “AI browsers are a hammer in search of a nail,” he told PYMNTS. “These ‘new browsers’ are just Chrome with an LLM [large language model] bolted on. … Why upend your entire way of browsing for the same browser with an LLM attached when it can introduce new vulnerabilities and security holes to your experience or that of your organization?”

Risks Are Many

The autonomy that makes AI browsers powerful also makes them risky. TechCrunch found that models capable of taking action across the web are vulnerable to indirect prompt injection, where hidden commands embedded in text can trigger unintended actions. MIT and Stanford researchers warned that such “web-use agents” have “high-privilege capabilities,” giving attackers new ways to manipulate them.

Andrew Gamino-Cheong, founder of AI-governance startup Trustible, said to PYMNTS that the implications go far beyond malware. “AI web browsers are the perfect tool to help big AI companies evade the growing ecosystem of anti-scraping tools like Cloudflare,” he said. “By having humans actually render the website, things like Captchas, paywalls and JavaScript loading can all be evaded, and then the raw text of those pages are being passed into the AI provider’s servers.”

He added that browsers capable of monitoring user behavior could blur privacy lines. “A web browser is the perfect tool for tracking how a person writes a document and can therefore capture whether an email, Google Doc or pitch to a reporter is generated or written by a human,” he said. “There isn’t any clear standard for how to prevent AI systems from accidentally capturing different types of secrets that you may see in your browser.”

Zbyněk Sopuch, CTO of cybersecurity firm Safetica, said AI browsers’ automation features “eliminate the line between data and instructions.”

“AI browsers are powerful because they can perform actions such as clicking on links or filling out forms on a user’s behalf,” he told PYMNTS. “The problem is that AI has shown itself to be unable to distinguish user-approved interactions from malicious ones.”

Sopuch added that the same capabilities that make browsing faster also make manipulation easier. “If a malicious prompt is hidden within a page, the browser might execute it as if it were a legitimate command,” he said. “That blurs the traditional separation between reading and acting online.”