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\t\t\tIllustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins \/ Futurism. Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Do AI browsers represent the future of perusing the world wide web<\/a>? The AI industry certainly wants you to believe that they do, just as it promised<\/a> autonomous AI \u201cagents\u201d could automate tasks on your computer.\u00a0<\/p>\n But at present, they don\u2019t seem to be all that helpful. The Verge recently tested<\/a> a bunch of these chatbot-integrated browsers, and came away totally unimpressed. A common theme throughout was that the browsers were janky and at times infuriatingly slow. And despite AI\u2019s promise of providing incredible automation, using them took a lot of effort and trial and error.<\/p>\n \u201cNo matter the browser, I kept running into the same fundamental problem: you have to think extra hard about how to craft the right prompt,\u201d wrote The Verge\u2019s Victoria Song. \u201cStapling an AI assistant to a browser doesn\u2019t magically redefine how you interact with a chatbot.\u201d<\/p>\n In October, OpenAI unveiled its new AI browser Atlas<\/a>, which is built with its chatbot ChatGPT at its center. It brought the still fairly niche realm of AI browsers into the spotlight and suggested that going forward they\u2019ll be another important battleground for the tech. Its competitors include Perplexity\u2019s Comet<\/a>, which first released in July, and The Browser Company\u2019s Dia, which debuted in June.<\/p>\n Mainstream browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge offer chatbot features as an add-on \u2014 Gemini and Copilot respectively \u2014 but full-blown AI browsers like Perplexity\u2019s and OpenAI\u2019s put agentic AI features front and center, encouraging you to type in a prompt before you do a URL.<\/p>\n The Verge tested all these browsers.\u00a0One task Song tried to use them for was organizing and \u201csummarizing\u201d emails, one of the often-touted selling points of the AI integration. This turned out to be a laborious endeavor: repeated attempts at narrowing down the prompts with more specific instructions still led to the AI browsers flagging unimportant emails and providing unhelpful summaries. It took this monstrosity of a prompt to finally get somewhere:<\/p>\n \u201cFind unanswered emails in which I had previously responded with interest or feature personalized requests\/feedback,\u201d the prompt read. \u201cThen, evaluate which ones I should respond to based on timeliness and keywords such as \u2019embargo\u2019 featuring dates in the next two weeks. Ignore emails with multiple follow-ups to which I have not responded.\u201d<\/p>\n Sounding very practical to you? Comet and Dia did manage to flag a few relevant emails, but the others snagged spam. OpenAI\u2019s Atlas simply provided a technical-sounding explanation for why it couldn\u2019t do what the prompt asked and suggested refining it further, at which point Song declared defeat.<\/p>\n Another task the AI browser struggled to pull off? Shopping, something that the likes of OpenAI have promised AI browsers and other agentic models would excel at. The AI tools could quickly perform a lot of research when asked to recommend a stylish pair of running shoes to buy, but would still commit elementary flubs like recommending stuff in the wrong color. Going through with the purchase was equally fraught: OpenAI\u2019s Atlas, for example, repeatedly nagged the user to ask if the right item was in the cart. At one point, Atlas spent a full minute trying to close one window just to get back to shopping, Song found.<\/p>\n In sum, AI browsers suffer from the same problems plaguing AI agents<\/a>: they\u2019re slow, require constant supervision, and need you to sign off on any important decisions, defeating the point of having an autonomous helper.\u00a0<\/p>\n The browsers also raise security risks that can\u2019t be ignored. Numerous studies have shown how they\u2019re extremely vulnerable to what\u2019s known as a prompt injection attack: a hacker delivers a hidden message to an AI, which could be embedded in malicious webpages the browser visits, to carry out harmful instructions. In one series of tests, researchers demonstrated that Perplexity\u2019s Comet could be manipulated into giving hackers access to your bank account<\/a> by showing it a Reddit post. Other research showed<\/a> that feeding OpenAI\u2019s Atlas fake URLs could trick it into visiting your Google Drive account and deleting files.<\/p>\n Safety obviously should be the priority. But it\u2019s a pretty existential risk to the tech if it never becomes seamless enough to convince people to use it. For now, AI browsers are less personal servant, and more something that needs to be constantly baby-sat.<\/p>\n \u201cMy whole AI browser experience reinforced that I spend a lot of time doing things for AI so that it can sometimes do things for me,\u201d Song wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s less about how AI fits into my life and more about how I can adapt what I do naturally to accommodate its growing presence.\u201d<\/p>\n