Perplexity Comet Is the Web Browser Google Chrome Wishes It Were

Perplexity has launched its first web browser, Comet. In plain sight, it is like any other browser, making it a direct competitor to Google Chrome—the world’s most popular browser. But Comet is more than that. It uses the company’s agentic AI to perform tasks on your behalf. That means you can get forms filled out, tickets booked, websites, audio, and videos summarised with relevant information without your intervention.

According to CEO Aravind Srinivas, Comet combines the capabilities of an AI chatbot and a web browser to enable basic-level automation on your computer. “Comet is not just another chatbot. It’s an AI-native browser that performs operational tasks, like a silent worker running continuously in the background,” said Srinivas, speaking to The Verge.

Available on both Windows and Mac platforms, Comet is built on Google’s open-source Chromium framework, which is also the foundation of browsers like Microsoft Edge, Brave, and DuckDuckGo. And even though you have the option to link your Google account to transfer your data to the browser, Perplexity wants you to get out of Google’s ecosystem. The first attempt at this is Perplexity AI’s ‘answer engine,’ which lets you enter your query directly into the address bar, replacing Google Search. You still have the option to choose Google Search as your default search engine. However, Perplexity’s search engine not only offers results in the form of web links but also distils information from them and curates them to offer the best answer for the query.

The AI assistant, available in the top-right corner of the browser, opens in a sidebar, much like Copilot in Microsoft Edge, and allows you to give prompts using text or voice. While it can handle regular and complex questions, including those related to the website you are browsing, the standout feature is the AI tool’s ability to do tasks on your behalf. Using prompts, you can ask AI to close tabs, send an email with the information you have already furnished, share posts on platforms such as X, and even book tickets to your favourite movie at your favourite theatre.

Perplexity AI’s new browser preempts a similar attempt by OpenAI. The Sam Altman-led company is reportedly developing a web browser that utilises the Operator model for agentic capabilities, a version of which is now available to ChatGPT’s paid subscribers. However, it is the browser that Google Chrome should have already become. Google’s Gemini AI models possess agentic capabilities, but they have not yet been implemented in Chrome. Similarly, Microsoft’s Copilot, although native, still lacks automation in the Edge browser.

Read more: Invest in AI, Not Doom-Scrolling—Perplexity AI Indian CEO’s Advice to Internet Users