I tested Perplexity’s AI browser Comet. Here are 3 features I tried right away.

What makes a browser a better than an ordinary browser? With the comet of Perplexity, that’s what I try to discover.

Last week, the Ai Perplexity search engine company launched its highly anticipated browser, which uses the Perplexity search engine and was delivered with an integrated AI assistant. As the AI models become more advanced with the reasoning of the thought chain to manage complex tasks, they are able to work more agents or autonomous. This is a natural adjustment for web browsers, which are essentially the bridge in our online life. A web browser like Comet can theoretically do much more than a chatbot linked to a single page or application, allowing actions on several tabs and platforms.

Perplexity Comet is an early entry, alongside the Dia of Arc browser, which seeks to create a new paradigm for navigation and shopping with AI. (Openai would also be about to launch his own AI browser). The possibility of automating and summing up our online experience has become a major focal point for the AI industry, because it offers the ostensible goal to accelerate tasks and soften our cognitive load.

And the time of the introduction of a new browser to compete with Google Chrome and Apple Safari could not be better. Google might be forced to sell Chrome after a huge antitrust loss. The decision also has an impact on Apple, which received $ 20 billion a year to make Google the default search engine for Safari. Apple already seems to make changes to its research offers, including a potential partnership with perplexity. This is all to say that there are suddenly many more opportunities for newcomers such as the perplexity of shaking the market.

Ironically, Comet works on Chromium, the Google Open Source Board service. So when I had access, going to my extensions and my settings was quite transparent. With everything that is transferred and configured, I dug to see what Comet can do. I must note that I have serious confidentiality problems, which I will explore in a follow -up article

Here are the first comet features that I tried.

Agent grocery store and pizza control

Perplexity boasts of making an Instacart grocery list as one of the main use cases for the AI assistant in Comet. The search engine already offers the possibility of buying products listed as search results in the chatbot with a Perplexity Pro account. But shopping with Comet is different because it really finds the products and adds them to your basket.

To challenge the comet, I tried to think of something with a tedious variety of articles. I took charge of creating a list of races for the iconic charcuterie board. This part was easy, because there is no shortage of items on the clever arrangement of meats and cheeses. Then I asked Comet to add the elements to my Instacart account. In particular, I had to be connected to Instacart, but I did not have to open the tab.

In the cat, I watched the AI assistant bought in real time for the articles on my list. It even displays a mini screen of what it does on the page, and if you click on the Steps tab, you can look at the perplexity of the reasons for its path through the Grocery Site (Shoprite) via Instacart. I have not included specific instructions on specific brands or specifications such as biological or local items, and I noticed that perplexity was lacking to choose the cheapest or most sold article according to Shoprite.

It is probably a safe bet, but the interior cheese snob in me did not like the AI assistant who makes these choices in my name. I would have preferred to obsessively compare various brands of cheese. For a hastily busy parent, however, it could work. The process took about five minutes to add around 20 items to my basket. When it was done, I clicked to open the Instacart window and I found all my items that awaited me. For reasons of confidentiality and security, my AI assistant informed me that he would not finish the purchase, so you should do it yourself (for the moment).

How did Comet made my saving time to order pizza? I thought it would be a much simpler task, but it had a little trouble. I have gluten intolerance, so I asked him to order a gluten -free cheese pizza on a seamless transport of one of my favorite local places. Here is where he fell on a roadblock.

I know by lots of experience that this particular restaurant lists the gluten -free option in its selection of garnishes rather than a separate crust option. Despite several minutes to browse the site, Comet could not find the gluten -free option. Instead, he added an ordinary cheese pizza to the cart and included a note asking him to be gluten -free in the special instructions. He also inexplicably asked for additional cheese, even if I did not ask for this. At this point, it would have been much easier to order the pizza myself.

Summarizing my X flow, YouTube videos and more

A case of popular use for generative AI in browsers is the possibility of summing up the content of a web page or a document. Various forms of this already exist with a Google Chrome extension and in Microsoft’s Edge browser, but the version of Perplexity feels a little more integrated into the experience. This is due to the AI assistant assistant that you can open or close in the upper right corner of the browser.

I found it particularly useful to tackle the expensive task of summarizing my X flow, but I was frustrated not to be linked to the sources of each message. The same goes to summarize long pages. I wanted the ability to jump on specific sections of the page, but I found myself reading the page anyway to find what the comet summed up.

As it was a specific use case promoted, I tried to use the comet to summarize the YouTube videos. As is the case with most of the summaries generated by AI, he felt that Comet had trouble highlighting and prioritizing the most salient information, giving equal quantities of explanation to information on variable importance, and glazing on some of the most remarkable moments.

When I asked Comet to summarize a Recent episode live of the Fork Podcast, the one where the CEO of Openai, Sam Altman and the COO Brad Lightcap, surprised the hosts by making a dramatic beginner entrance, Comet said nothing about it. He also summarized too much sometimes.

Instead of highlighting specific blows – Lightcap and Altman were invited to know if Mark Zuckerberg really believes in superintelligence, and Lightcap said: “I think [Zuckerberg] believes He is Super intelligent “- The comet has succeeded in this interaction by describing it as” humorous comments on the approach of Zuckerberg “.

Organization of the automated tab

One of my favorite features on Chrome is the possibility of grouping the many tabs that I opened. But this requires manually organizing the tabs one by one. There are chrome extensions that can automatically group you tabs, but Comet has this integrated function.

In a new Comet tab, I asked the assistant to group my tabs open by subject and I looked with admiration while they were thematically organized. He went a little too far by adding subject labels to the individual tabs which did not correspond to any other subject, like my calendar, which ended up creating visual size, but it is easy to manage if necessary.

Comet can also access information from the pages tabs that you do not look actively, which is useful for comparing products or finding a quick reference to something.

Perplexity Comet is worth it?

Comet takes place to users on a waiting list and for Perplexity Pro subscribers who pay $ 200 per month. So far, it has been a bit mixed. I could see myself using certain features, while others take longer than they are worth. Either they do not work completely, or I spend the results of the double verification of the comet so long that I end up wasting time. And I still have confidentiality problems, but this is an entirely separate article (and coming soon, I promise).

So far, I have been undecided.