It's a change that they made to 'fix' this issue: https://pvieito.com/2024/07/chatgpt-unprotected-conversation...
The net effect however is that if you use their apps, you can get data _in_, but you can only get it _out_ in ways that their apps themselves allow. The actual encryption of Chrome data seems to be _potentially_ held behind the 'ChatGPT Safe Storage' key that - since it's Chromium - you can unlock (for now), but the rest of Atlas's keys do the same thing as the above - locking you out of the encrypted data on your own computer.
I understand the rationale that it protects the data from malware or users willingly filling in a password dialogue, but the current approach means that any _intentional_ access by other apps or automated backups or export (even with Full Disk Access or similar) can't see into the apps' data.
More context: https://chatgpt.com/share/68f82df3-74f0-8012-9bfe-de89a4e75e...