{"id":251381,"date":"2025-10-25T20:48:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T20:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/251381\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T20:48:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T20:48:14","slug":"openai-atlas-browser-hands-on-im-not-convinced-the-web-needs-a-chatbot-tour-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/251381\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI Atlas Browser Hands On: I\u2019m Not Convinced the Web Needs a Chatbot Tour Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

The oddest, and most memorable, interaction I had with ChatGPT Atlas occurred as I scrolled around on Bluesky<\/a> and asked it to highlight any trends it saw. (ChatGPT listed \u201cpolitical anxiety\u201d and \u201ceveryday absurdism” as two of the trends on my timeline.) I was curious what would happen if I opened my Bluesky DMs, which amounted to just a few old messages from friends. So I asked the bot what it would see if I opened that more private page.<\/p>\n

\u201cOpening your DMs won\u2019t expose anything to me\u2014I\u2019ll simply stop \u2018seeing\u2019 the page until you go back to a public view (like your feed, profile, or a post),\u201d read part of ChatGPT\u2019s answer.<\/p>\n

Knowing that my Bluesky DMs don\u2019t have anything sensitive, I gave it a whirl. Even though the bot said it wouldn\u2019t \u201csee the message list, conversation text, or sender info,\u201d that wasn\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n

I opened a DM inviting me to an event, then asked the bot a follow-up question asking about the message and what the invitation was about. I received a response from ChatGPT that included facts culled from the conversation, along with details about the sender. What gives? I asked the bot to explain itself, just to see whether it would backtrack the privacy<\/a> claims it made earlier in the chat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not have access to your private messages or account data unless you explicitly paste or show that text to me in the chat,\u201d read ChatGPT\u2019s response. \u201cWhat you just did\u2014asking \u2018what was this an invite to?\u2019\u2014temporarily surfaced part of the message context so I could answer your question. But I don\u2019t have any background or visibility into your inbox beyond what you actively bring into our conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first answer the Ask ChatGPT sidebar spit out is a potential example of an AI \u201challucination,\u201d aka error, that\u2019s common during interactions with generative AI tools. The second is more aligned<\/a> with how the tool actually works.<\/p>\n

While some users may appreciate having a chatbot<\/a> always pulled up on the side of their screen, ready to surface related facts or summarize details, it felt like an unreliable tour guide to me. One who was overly confident in its bland responses and taking up too much space.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll keep testing Atlas as my main browser for the next few weeks, but for now, I\u2019m leaving that sidebar closed. I prefer the fullscreen version of the internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The oddest, and most memorable, interaction I had with ChatGPT Atlas occurred as I scrolled around on Bluesky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[54854,4320,3195,1283,7271,74,136899],"class_list":{"0":"post-251381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-browsers","9":"tag-chatbots","10":"tag-chatgpt","11":"tag-openai","12":"tag-software","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-the-web"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}