What makes an AI browser better than a regular browser? With Perplexity’s Comet, that’s what I’m trying to find out.
Last week, AI search engine company Perplexity launched its highly anticipated browser, which uses the Perplexity search engine and comes with a built-in AI assistant. As AI models become more advanced with chain-of-thought reasoning for handling complex tasks, they’re capable of more agentic, or autonomous, work. This is a natural fit for web browsers, which are essentially the gateway to our online lives. An AI web browser like Comet can theoretically do much more than a chatbot tied to a single page or app, enabling actions across multiple tabs and platforms.
Perplexity’s Comet browser is an early entry, alongside Arc’s Dia browser, that seeks to create a new paradigm for browsing and shopping with AI. (OpenAI is also reportedly about to launch its own AI browser). The ability to automate and summarize our experience online has become a major focal point for the AI industry, since it offers the ostensible purpose of speeding up tasks and easing our cognitive load.
And the timing for introducing a new browser to compete with Google Chrome and Apple Safari couldn’t be better. Google might be forced to sell Chrome after a huge antitrust loss. The ruling also impacts Apple, which received $20 billion a year to make Google the default search engine for Safari. Apple already seems to be making changes to its search offerings, including a potential partnership with Perplexity. That’s all to say there’s suddenly a lot more opportunity for newcomers like Perplexity to shake up the market.
Somewhat ironically, Comet runs on Chromium, Google’s open-source browser service. So when I got access, switching over my extensions and settings was pretty seamless. With everything transferred and set up, I dug in to see what Comet can do. I should note that I do have some serious privacy concerns, which I’ll explore in a follow-up article
Here are the first Comet features I tried out.
Agentic grocery shopping and pizza ordering
Perplexity touts making an Instacart grocery list as one of the main use cases for Comet’s AI assistant. The search engine already offers the ability to buy products listed as search results within the chatbot with a Perplexity Pro account. But shopping with Comet is different since it actually finds the products and adds them to your cart.
To challenge Comet, I tried to think of something with a tedious variety of items. I tasked Comet with creating a shopping list for the iconic charcuterie board. That part was easy, since there’s no shortage of articles about the artful arrangement of meats and cheeses. Next, I asked Comet to add the items to my Instacart account. Notably, I had to be logged into Instacart, but I didn’t have to have the tab open.
Within the chat, I watched as the AI assistant shopped in real-time for the items on my list. It even shows a mini screen of what it’s doing on the page, and if you click over to the Steps tab, you can watch as Perplexity reasons its way through the grocery store (ShopRite) site via Instacart. I didn’t include any specific instructions on particular brands or specifications such as organic or local items, and I noticed that Perplexity defaulted to choosing the least expensive or bestselling item according to ShopRite.
Credit: Screenshot: Mashable / Perplexity
This is probably a safe bet, but the inner cheese snob in me didn’t like the AI assistant making these choices on my behalf. I would’ve preferred to obsessively compare various cheese brands. For a busy parent in a hurry, though, this could work pretty well. The process took about five minutes to add around 20 items to my cart. When it was done, I clicked to open the Instacart window and found all my items waiting for me. For privacy and security reasons, my AI assistant informed me it wouldn’t complete the purchase, so you’d have to do that yourself (for now).
How did Comet do with my favorite pastime of ordering pizza? I thought this would be a much simpler task, but it struggled a bit. I have a gluten intolerance, so I asked it to order a gluten-free cheese pizza on Seamless from one of my favorite local spots. Here’s where it ran into a roadblock.
Credit: Screenshot: Mashable / Perplexity
I know from lots of experience that this particular restaurant lists the gluten-free option within its toppings selection instead of as a separate crust option. Despite spending several minutes scouring the site, Comet couldn’t find the gluten-free option. Instead, it added a regular cheese pizza to the cart and included a note asking it to be gluten-free in the special instructions box. It also inexplicably requested extra cheese, even though I didn’t ask for that. At this point, it would’ve been way easier to order the pizza myself.
Summarizing my X feed, YouTube videos, and more
A popular use case for generative AI in browsers is the ability to summarize the contents of a webpage or document. Various forms of this already exist with a Google Chrome extension and in Microsoft’s Edge browser, but Perplexity’s version feels a little more integrated into the experience. This is due to the AI assistant sidecar that you can open or close from the top right-hand corner of the browser.
I found it particularly useful for tackling the onerous task of summarizing my X feed, but was frustrated that it didn’t link to the sources of each post. Same goes for summarizing lengthy pages. I wanted the ability to jump to specific sections of the page, but found myself having to read the page anyway just to find what Comet was summarizing.
Since it was a specific use case Perplexity promoted, I tried using Comet to summarize YouTube videos. As is the case with most AI-generated summaries, it felt like Comet struggled to highlight and prioritize the most salient information, instead giving equal amounts of explanation to information of varying importance, and glazing over some of the more noteworthy moments.
When I asked Comet to summarize a recent live episode of the Hard Fork podcast, the one where OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and COO Brad Lightcap surprised the hosts by making a dramatic early entrance, Comet didn’t say anything about that. It also summarized too broadly at times.
Credit: Screenshot: Mashable / Perplexity
Instead of highlighting specific jabs — Lightcap and Altman were asked if Mark Zuckerberg actually believes in superintelligence, and Lightcap said, “I think [Zuckerberg] believes he’s super intelligent” — Comet watered down this interaction by describing it as “humorous commentary about Zuckerberg’s approach.”
Automated tab organizing
One of my favorite features on Chrome is the ability to group the many, many tabs I have open. But this requires manually organizing tabs one-by-one. There are Chrome extensions that can automatically group tabs for you, but Comet has this function built in.
In a new Comet tab, I asked the assistant to group my open tabs by topic and watched in awe as they were thematically organized. It did go a little overboard by adding topic labels to individual tabs that didn’t fit into any other topic, like my calendar, which ended up creating more visual clutter, but it’s easy to ungroup as needed.
Comet can also access information from tabs of pages you’re not actively looking at, which is useful for comparing products or finding a quick reference to something.
Is Perplexity Comet worth it?
Comet is rolling out to users on a waitlist and for Perplexity Pro subscribers who pay $200 a month. So far, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag. I could see myself using certain features, while others take more time than they’re worth. Either they don’t totally work, or I spend so long double-checking Comet’s results that I actually end up losing time. And I still have some privacy concerns, but that’s an entirely separate article (and coming soon, I promise).
So far, I’m undecided.
