What makes an AI browser higher than a typical browser? With Perplexity’s Comet, that is what I am looking for out.
Final week, AI seek engine corporate Perplexity introduced its extremely expected browser, which makes use of the Perplexity seek engine and springs with a integrated AI assistant. As AI fashions change into extra complicated with chain-of-thought reasoning for dealing with advanced duties, they are able to extra agentic, or self reliant, paintings. This can be a herbal are compatible for internet browsers, which might be necessarily the gateway to our on-line lives. An AI internet browser like Comet can theoretically do a lot more than a chatbot tied to a unmarried web page or app, enabling movements throughout more than one tabs and platforms.
Perplexity’s Comet browser is an early access, along Arc’s Dia browser, that seeks to create a brand new paradigm for surfing and buying groceries with AI. (OpenAI may be reportedly about to release its personal AI browser). The facility to automate and summarize our enjoy on-line has change into a big point of interest for the AI business, because it gives the ostensible objective of dashing up duties and easing our cognitive load.
And the timing for introducing a brand new browser to compete with Google Chrome and Apple Safari couldn’t be higher. Google could be pressured to promote Chrome after an enormous antitrust loss. The ruling additionally affects Apple, which gained $20 billion a yr to make Google the default seek engine for Safari. Apple already appears to be making adjustments to its seek choices, together with a possible partnership with Perplexity. That’s all to mention there’s much more alternative for novices like Perplexity to shake up the marketplace.
Slightly mockingly, Comet runs on Chromium, Google’s open-source browser carrier. So after I were given get right of entry to, switching over my extensions and settings was once beautiful seamless. With the entirety transferred and arrange, I dug in to peer what Comet can do. I will have to notice that I do have some critical privateness considerations, which I’m going to discover in a follow-up article
Listed here are the primary Comet options I attempted out.
Agentic grocery buying groceries and pizza ordering
Perplexity touts making an Instacart grocery listing as one of the vital major use circumstances for Comet’s AI assistant. The quest engine already gives the skill to shop for merchandise indexed as seek effects inside the chatbot with a Perplexity Professional account. However buying groceries with Comet is other because it in reality reveals the goods and provides them on your cart.
To problem Comet, I attempted to think about one thing with a tedious number of pieces. I tasked Comet with making a buying groceries listing for the enduring charcuterie board. That section was once simple, since there is no scarcity of articles concerning the clever association of meats and cheeses. Subsequent, I requested Comet so as to add the pieces to my Instacart account. Significantly, I needed to be logged into Instacart, however I did not need to have the tab open.
Inside the chat, I watched because the AI assistant shopped in real-time for the pieces on my listing. It even displays a mini display screen of what it is doing at the web page, and for those who click on over to the Steps tab, you’ll watch as Perplexity causes its method throughout the grocery retailer (ShopRite) web site by way of Instacart. I did not come with any particular directions on explicit manufacturers or specs akin to natural or native pieces, and I realized that Perplexity defaulted to picking the least pricey or bestselling merchandise consistent with ShopRite.
Mashable Gentle Pace
Comet defaulted to discovering low-priced pieces marked as “best possible dealers,” which is not a foul manner with out extra particular directions.
Credit score: Screenshot: Mashable / Perplexity
That is most certainly a protected guess, however the interior cheese snob in me did not just like the AI assistant making those alternatives on my behalf. I’d’ve most well-liked to obsessively examine more than a few cheese manufacturers. For a hectic mother or father in a rush, although, this would paintings beautiful neatly. The method took about 5 mins so as to add round 20 pieces to my cart. When it was once finished, I clicked to open the Instacart window and located all my pieces looking ahead to me. For privateness and safety causes, my AI assistant knowledgeable me it would not entire the acquisition, so you’ll have to try this your self (for now).
How did Comet do with my favourite interest of ordering pizza? I assumed this may be a miles more practical job, however it struggled somewhat. I’ve a gluten intolerance, so I requested it to reserve a gluten-free cheese pizza on Seamless from considered one of my favourite native spots. Here is the place it ran right into a roadblock.
Comet could not in finding the gluten-free pizza possibility so it added the request within the particular directions field (wonderful) however it additionally stated so as to add further cheese, which I did not ask for (huh?)
Credit score: Screenshot: Mashable / Perplexity
I do know from quite a lot of enjoy that this actual eating place lists the gluten-free possibility inside of its toppings variety as a substitute of as a separate crust possibility. Regardless of spending a number of mins scouring the web site, Comet could not in finding the gluten-free possibility. As an alternative, it added a typical cheese pizza to the cart and integrated a notice asking it to be gluten-free within the particular directions field. It additionally inexplicably asked further cheese, although I did not ask for that. At this level, it might’ve been method more straightforward to reserve the pizza myself.
Summarizing my X feed, YouTube movies, and extra
A well-liked use case for generative AI in browsers is the power to summarize the contents of a webpage or record. More than a few sorts of this exist already with a Google Chrome extension and in Microsoft’s Edge browser, however Perplexity’s model feels a bit extra built-in into the enjoy. That is because of the AI assistant sidecar that you’ll open or shut from the highest right-hand nook of the browser.
I discovered it specifically helpful for tackling the exhausting job of summarizing my X feed, however was once annoyed that it did not hyperlink to the resources of each and every submit. Identical is going for summarizing long pages. I sought after the power to leap to express sections of the web page, however discovered myself having to learn the web page anyway simply to seek out what Comet was once summarizing.
Because it was once a particular use case Perplexity promoted, I attempted the use of Comet to summarize YouTube movies. As is the case with maximum AI-generated summaries, it felt like Comet struggled to spotlight and prioritize essentially the most salient data, as a substitute giving equivalent quantities of clarification to data of various significance, and glazing over one of the most extra noteworthy moments.
After I requested Comet to summarize a fresh reside episode of the Laborious Fork podcast, the only the place OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and COO Brad Lightcap stunned the hosts by means of creating a dramatic early front, Comet did not say the rest about that. It additionally summarized too extensively from time to time.
Comet’s abstract of the reside ‘Laborious Fork’ podcast was once enough, however lacked any of the juicy main points.
Credit score: Screenshot: Mashable / Perplexity
As an alternative of highlighting particular jabs — Lightcap and Altman have been requested if Mark Zuckerberg in reality believes in superintelligence, and Lightcap stated, “I feel [Zuckerberg] believes he is tremendous clever” — Comet watered down this interplay by means of describing it as “funny observation about Zuckerberg’s manner.”
Computerized tab organizing
Certainly one of my favourite options on Chrome is the power to team the numerous, many tabs I’ve open. However this calls for manually organizing tabs one-by-one. There are Chrome extensions that may mechanically team tabs for you, however Comet has this serve as inbuilt.
In a brand new Comet tab, I requested the assistant to team my open tabs by means of matter and watched in awe as they have been thematically arranged. It did move a bit overboard by means of including matter labels to person tabs that did not are compatible into some other matter, like my calendar, which ended up growing extra visible litter, however it is simple to ungroup as wanted.
Comet too can get right of entry to data from tabs of pages you might be now not actively having a look at, which comes in handy for evaluating merchandise or discovering a handy guide a rough connection with one thing.
Is Perplexity Comet value it?
Comet is rolling out to customers on a waitlist and for Perplexity Professional subscribers who pay $200 a month. Thus far, it is been somewhat of a combined bag. I may see myself the use of positive options, whilst others take extra time than they are value. Both they do not utterly paintings, or I spend goodbye double-checking Comet’s effects that I in reality finally end up dropping time. And I nonetheless have some privateness considerations, however that is a completely separate article (and coming quickly, I promise).
Thus far, I am unsure.
Subjects
Synthetic Intelligence
