The AI browser race begins: Google’s smarter Chrome vs OpenAI’s next big move
Google is rolling out new AI features in Chrome in the U.S. (and they should reach the UK soon). The update puts a smarter AI assistant directly inside your browser — helping you across tabs, answering questions from the address bar, automating tasks, and keeping you safer online. New capabilities include page summaries, cross-tab comparisons, conversational search (AI Mode included in the search bar), stronger fraud protection, and soon ‘agentic browsing’, where Chrome will be able to handle multi-step tasks like booking tickets.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is developing its own AI-powered browser with similar agentic features, announced back in July and still in progress. Instead of simply showing search results, this browser allows ChatGPT to take actions on the user’s behalf within a conversational interface.
What it means for you:
Google is positioning AI as a hands-on assistant across browsing, making everyday online tasks smoother, safer and more automated. In doing so, AI is turning browsers from passive tools into active digital assistants.
While OpenAI’s browser is still to be confirmed, this could mark a major shift — and potentially a serious threat to the dominant player, Google Chrome — by reducing its access to user data and creating direct competition between the two.
Either way, AI browsers could significantly change how people navigate the web and how publishers receive traffic. Let’s see how this plays out!