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 within systems that change in real time, where your action at moment T affects what happens at moment T+1, and where milliseconds matter.

What we actually tested

The team chose four games as testing grounds, each revealing different things about what Atlas can and can’t do.

Sudoku is pure logic. No time pressure. No reflexes needed. Just reasoning. This is where you’d expect an AI system to excel. 2048 requires strategy and planning. You slide numbered tiles together to combine them, and you need to think several moves ahead without trapping yourself. Still no urgency, though. You control the pace.