ChatGPT Atlas can browse, but can it *really* master web games?

For years, we’ve tested language models on static tasks: answer this question, summarize this document, solve this math problem. The model reads, thinks, and produces text. Clean. Measurable. Somewhat artificial compared to how humans actually need to work.

OpenAI’s Atlas changes the equation. Instead of stopping at text generation, this system can see webpages, understand what they contain, and directly control a browser through cursor and keyboard inputs. It perceives and acts. That’s genuinely new.

The obvious question follows: if AI can now interact with the web the way humans do, what are the actual limits? New research tackles that by asking something simpler and more revealing: can it play games?

Games are unforgiving. They have clear success metrics — your score, whether you win. They force you to navigate three different types of challenges: logical puzzles, real-time reflexes, and spatial reasoning in unfamiliar environments. You can’t fake your way through a game. This makes them perfect test cases for understanding what Atlas can and can’t do when faced with dynamic, interactive environments. Most AI evaluation has focused on information retrieval and task completion on static websites. But web interaction doesn’t only mean filling out forms or extracting data. It means acting…