{"id":236067,"date":"2025-10-23T22:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T22:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/236067\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T22:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T22:17:08","slug":"two-days-after-openais-atlas-microsoft-re-launches-a-nearly-identical-ai-browser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/236067\/","title":{"rendered":"Two days after OpenAI’s Atlas, Microsoft re-launches a nearly identical AI browser"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft released a new batch of features for its AI assistant Thursday, including an ambitious project<\/a> that builds artificial intelligence directly into one of its most central products. More than a simple extension, the Copilot Mode in Microsoft\u2019s Edge browser<\/a> is Microsoft\u2019s take on the long-hyped AI browser category \u2014 an intelligent and flexible AI assistant that follows you as you browse the web.<\/p>\n

Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, even described the new product in those terms in the announcement. \u201cCopilot Mode in Edge is evolving into an AI browser that is your dynamic, intelligent companion,\u201d Suleyman wrote in the announcement post. \u201cWith your permission, Copilot can see and reason over your open tabs, summarize and compare information, and even take actions like booking a hotel or filling out forms.\u201d<\/p>\n

The official launch<\/a> for Edge\u2019s Copilot Mode was in July, when it rolled out with basic features like a Search bar on new tabs and natural voice navigation. But the mode was opt-in and didn\u2019t get quite the attention you\u2019d expect. At Thursday\u2019s event, Microsoft got more ambitious, introducing \u201cActions\u201d that allow Copilot to fill out forms or book hotels and \u201cJourneys\u201d that let Copilot trace connections between your open tabs. It\u2019s not a huge shift in the product, but it was enough to put the idea of the AI browser at center stage in the event. <\/p>\n

The announcement comes just two days after a similar launch from OpenAI, which showed off its new Atlas browser. Of course, Copilot\u2019s release has been scheduled for weeks, and new Copilot Mode has probably been in development for months. Neither company invented the idea of an AI-assisted web browser. But the visual similarity between the two products is hard to ignore.<\/p>\n

\"\"A demo frame from Microsoft\u2019s CopIlot for Edge announcement<\/p>\n

\"\"A Demo frame from OpenAI\u2019s Atlas announcement<\/p>\n

These are two very similar pictures. The Copilot for Edge background is a little darker, there\u2019s text instead of a logo, and the close\/minimize buttons follow Windows conventions instead of MacOS conventions. Beyond that, Copilot puts its \u201cride-along\u201d function in a new tab instead of a split-screen\u2026 but that\u2019s about it. It\u2019s pretty much the same product.<\/p>\n

Part of the similarity is functional: people like clean browsers, and there are only so many ways to integrate a chatbot window into the \u201cnew tab\u201d screen. For users, the main difference will come from the underlying models, so maybe a little facial similarity doesn\u2019t make too big a difference. <\/p>\n

Browsers mostly look the same anyway. But given the high stakes of the AI race and the tense state of play between the two companies, it seems significant that we got both of these browsers in the same week.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Correction: A previous version of this post erroneously referred to the Oct 23rd event as the initial launch of Copilot for Edge. In fact, the feature was launched in July. TechCrunch regrets the error.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft released a new batch of features for its AI assistant Thursday, including an ambitious project that builds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,46065,2577,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-236067","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-copilot","14":"tag-microsoft","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}