OpenAI has launched Atlas, a browser that promises to compete with Chrome by reading your intentions before you type, then quietly correcting your life choices like a particularly nosy spellcheck. It is the first browser to ask if you’ve tried turning your expectations off and on again.

The address bar claims to understand context, which is great, because I don’t. Type “weather,” and Atlas fetches a forecast, a coat, and three supportive texts from your future self explaining why you forgot the umbrella. It’s like autocomplete met a guidance counselor and they opened a startup.

Chrome once pitched itself as minimal, then adopted more features than a Swiss Army billboard. Atlas counters by offering fewer buttons with bigger feelings. Tabs no longer multiply; they enter a co-parenting arrangement and divide the emotional labor of article guilt.

OpenAI says Atlas is designed for privacy, performance, and politely declining cookie pop-ups as if they’re multilevel marketing for crumbs. The browser claims it will only collect data necessary to improve your experience, which it defines as “everything you’ve ever looked at, thought about, or said in the shower,” but with consent you agree to after six pages of scroll yoga.

A friend asked what to install for safer browsing, and I found myself whispering AI-native privacy browser like an incense blend sold at a hackerspace. Atlas nodded from the taskbar the way a plant nods when you put it near a window and call it progress.

Passwords migrate into a built-in vault that says it’s “zero-knowledge,” which is refreshing in an era of zero-shame. It integrates with a quantum-resistant password manager, because someday a future computer will crack your cat’s name followed by 123, and Atlas aims to disappoint that computer personally.

Google responded with a statement printed on a cookie banner you cannot close, promising Chrome’s new “Don’t Be Evil 2.0: The Requel” initiative. Rumor has it Chrome’s incognito mode will be renamed “Schrödinger’s Privacy,” where you are simultaneously tracked and not tracked until a regulator opens the box.

Ad tech executives fear Atlas will summarize articles before ads finish stretching their pre-roll hamstrings. In tests, the browser replaced some ad slots with “sponsor of this thought” disclaimers and a tasteful yawn. Influencers complained that their affiliate links now render as gentle apologies.

Performance benchmarks are, frankly, rude. Atlas claims to load pages before you click them, interview them about their sources, and then present them back to you as a bullet journal your therapist will annotate. The back button now offers a formal statement of regret in serif.

I read the privacy policy to the end, because that’s my cardio. It concludes with a haiku, a promise not to sell your soul without a fair market appraisal, and a note that “free” means “someone else is buying your lunch and you’ll hear about it forever.” I’ve seen EULAs with fewer plot twists and more honesty from game show contracts.

In hands-on tests, my aunt opened 48 tabs about lasagna, three about volcanoes, and one about the ethics of autoplay. Atlas asked if she needed a break or a bib. When a tab crashed, it performed a tasteful faint and left behind a note thanking the CPU for its service.

As a browser, Atlas is function-forward, flourish-reluctant, and faintly judgmental—exactly the energy of a spreadsheet that learned empathy. If it keeps its promises, we may finally browse with fewer pop-ups and more dignity. And if it doesn’t, well, I’ll clear my cookies again and use them as coasters for the next big launch that ships as marketing long before it arrives as features.