Welcome to AI Atlas, CNET's Guide to Today's Artificial Intelligence

No guide is complete without an atlas. 

Here at CNET — where our mission is to be your guide to a better future in our tech-driven world — creating an atlas is part of our long tradition of helping you understand new and influential technologies. We did it back in 2007 with the iPhone Atlas, just as the revolutionary phones were hitting stores for the first time — and again in 2010 with Android Atlas, which was dedicated to the Google phones that sparked a revolution of their own. These two blogs reported on everything from phone rumors to the ins and outs of app stores.

The rise of generative artificial intelligence is this generation's iPhone moment, according to AI experts like CNET's Connie Guglielmo (who witnessed the iPhone debut firsthand). To meet this unique moment, today we are unveiling AI Atlas, a brand new compendium of advice, reviews, news, videos and views on artificial intelligence, a broad field that encompasses generative AI and much more. 

Who is AI Atlas for? It's for you…

• If you're new to the world of AI and are looking to understand the basics, like what it is (and isn't) and how to integrate it into your life in smart and effective ways. You'll find FAQs, tips, glossaries and other expert-created work that helps you figure out what you need to know.
• If you're an early adopter who's already immersed in these new technologies and looking for inspiration on how to get even more value out of them. The new hub features in-depth, rigorous and independent reviews of some of the most popular AI tools available today, from ChatGPT to the image generator Dall-E to the search engine Perplexity.
• If you're captivated by the rise of AI and want to think through what it means for you and for all of us at large. We'll offer news, opinion and expert guidance, including in a weekly newsletter. 

AI Atlas comes to you from the editorial experts at CNET. Every piece of content has been created by our unbiased and independent experts, and it's all human-created because it takes humans to properly judge a machine. (We do, in a few cases, use AI for other CNET tasks. You can see our public AI policy for more info on how we use and think about AI.)

Creating the initial round of rated reviews of products and services that are part of AI Atlas wasn't an easy task. The new tools are unique for two reasons:

• AI technology is rapidly advancing, and the pace of innovation is high. That means that AI tools and services frequently come out with updates and new versions. 
• The potential use cases for AI are dizzying. There's almost no limit, for example, to what you can ask an AI chatbot to do for you. 

To solve the riddle, CNET's editors used our nearly 30 years of experience assessing and rating products and services while seeking to answer two main questions: How good is an AI tool relative to the competition, and which purposes does it serve best? This approach helped us develop a unique scoring methodology that takes into account factors such as ease of use, access requirements and value. See more about how we test AI products and services.

AI Atlas is here to guide you through a future where artificial intelligence changes the way we live and work. As the terrain shifts and evolves, so will our atlas. But we'll stay committed to our mission of helping you understand, harness and embrace the technological change around you. 

Visit our AI Atlas hub to start exploring. Please send us any feedback to hello@cnet.com.