OpenAI's ChatGPT Chrome Extension Can Now Drive Open Tabs

OpenAI has split its ChatGPT Chrome extension into two modes, giving the sidebar assistant the ability not only to read open tabs but to drive them. Writing in 9to5Google, Ben Schoon describes a Chat mode that "can look across your open tabs and gather info" and a Work mode in which "ChatGPT can control your Chrome tabs to get things, like sending messages, filling out forms, or downloading files," and can even "organize and group that pile of tabs you have open."

The Chrome Web Store listing for the extension reports 7,000,000 users, a reach OpenAI now taps without shipping its own browser. The company framed the change on X as "bringing the power of computer use to anyone who uses Chrome."

That footprint partly replaces what OpenAI lost when it shut down Atlas, its standalone browser, earlier this year. Rather than keep fighting Chrome for the window, OpenAI is embedding the agent in the sidebar, where "your entire ChatGPT history is right there, and you can ask question in Chat or get things done in Work - side by side while you're on a site." The release lands in a dense stretch of agent news: 497 agent stories have crossed our tracker in the last 90 days.