ChatGPT's Atlas: The Browser That's Anti-Web - Anil Dash
"OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released their own browser called Atlas, and it actually is something new: the first browser that actively fights against the web. Let's talk about what that means, and what dangers there are from an anti-web browser made by an AI company — one that probably needs a warning label when you install it."
https://www.anildash.com/2025/10/22/atlas-anti-web-browser/
#ai #atlas #chatgpt #genai #openai #web
Andreas Wagner
and 12 others
boosted
OK here's a theory: #ChatGPT's #Atlas browser is not a really browser but fact a way for OpenAI to circumvent scrape blockers. It's more a distributed human-based scraper rather than anything else.
Given how widely loathed AI and how damaging AI scrapers have become #OpenAI's IP ranges ended up in quite a lot of block lists, many servers outright terminate any connection to them. Then there are things like #Anubis or #Iocaine that further frustrate #LLM scraping.
But what if you DIDN'T neeed to bother about all that? What if you could use civilian IP addresses with "organic" traffic patterns, and have humans solve Captchas, provide proof of work for Anubis, or get around Iocaine? All this for free -- you don't even need to pay people for it?
I would be REALLY interested to see what telemetry Atlas sends back. 100% certain it will send back things like URL and rendered HTML output, possibly user interaction patterns ("a normal human on this website moves their mouse first to the 'I am not a bot' captcha then clicks it). They do not have to respect robots.txt because, well, it comes from organic visitors...
Am I crazy?
jaz :twt: :wales_flag:
and 4 others
boosted
I'm excited to show off #Atlas - a social mapping server for the #Fediverse. In about two weeks, we've gone from crazy on I70 to a fledgling app that lets me annotate any location on the globe and share it over #ActivityPub
There's still a lot to do. But there's enough here for me to ask for your help. I would love to hear what you think of this short video, and to start talking to everyone out there who's interested in making maps on the Fediverse.
OK here's a theory: #ChatGPT's #Atlas browser is not a really browser but fact a way for OpenAI to circumvent scrape blockers. It's more a distributed human-based scraper rather than anything else.
Given how widely loathed AI and how damaging AI scrapers have become #OpenAI's IP ranges ended up in quite a lot of block lists, many servers outright terminate any connection to them. Then there are things like #Anubis or #Iocaine that further frustrate #LLM scraping.
But what if you DIDN'T neeed to bother about all that? What if you could use civilian IP addresses with "organic" traffic patterns, and have humans solve Captchas, provide proof of work for Anubis, or get around Iocaine? All this for free -- you don't even need to pay people for it?
I would be REALLY interested to see what telemetry Atlas sends back. 100% certain it will send back things like URL and rendered HTML output, possibly user interaction patterns ("a normal human on this website moves their mouse first to the 'I am not a bot' captcha then clicks it). They do not have to respect robots.txt because, well, it comes from organic visitors...
Am I crazy?