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Comet AI Browser by Perplexity.ai: The New AI-Powered Browser

Perplexity AI created the sophisticated, AI-powered web browser known as Comet AI Browser. Here are some of its salient characteristics and details:

Key Technology: Based on the Chromium framework, this technology is well-known to Chrome users, but AI is intricately woven throughout the user experience.

AI-powered Search: Makes use of Perplexity’s AI engine by default. Users receive instant, context-aware summaries and answers—often with cited sources—instead of conventional search results.

The business Perplexity AI, which is well-known for its conversational AI search engine, has created a new web browser called Comet AI Browser. With Comet, Perplexity aims to develop an “agentic” browser that can do intricate, multi-step activities for you in addition to providing information.

Below is a summary of its salient characteristics and the opinions expressed by users:

Important Features

Integrated AI Assistant: Comet’s AI assistant, which is driven by Perplexity’s AI model, is its central component. This helper is always available and resides on a sidebar. It uses a conversational interface in place of the conventional search bar.

Comet’s most lauded characteristic is its agentic capabilities. Multi-step processes that would often require manual input can be handled by the browser. Among the examples are:

Shopping includes reading reviews, comparing products on several websites, and even putting items to a basket.

Research: Analyzing data across several open tabs and summarizing articles, YouTube videos, or full feeds (like X).

Email and Calendar Management: creating emails, setting up meetings, and using your calendar and inbox to receive a daily summary.

Contextual Understanding: To offer more pertinent responses and recommendations, the AI assistant may consult your open tabs and browsing history. You can target a particular page with your queries by using the “@tab” capability.

Comet is based on the same open-source framework as Google Chrome, which is called Chromium. This indicates that it works with the majority of Chrome extensions and that moving your settings and bookmarks is easy.

Privacy Features: According to Perplexity, browsing history, search queries, and AI interactions are locally kept on user devices with end-to-end encryption, despite some users’ concerns regarding privacy stemming from the nature of the browser’s data collecting. It has a built-in ad blocker as well.

Evaluations and Reactions

Many journalists and tech reviewers have given Comet mixed but largely good reviews, viewing it as a preview of browsing in the future.

“Top Class” Potential: Comet is hailed by many as a “game-changer” or “the future of browsing.” Its agentic capabilities are seen to represent a major advancement above basic AI-powered search.

Impressive but Flawed: Although the concept is strong, reviewers frequently point out that the execution is still lacking. When faced with challenging tasks, the agentic traits may be a “dice roll” and fail or become stuck. Although it frequently takes longer than performing the activity by hand, it operates in the background, giving you more time for other activities.

User Interface and Performance: The browser is generally quick, and the interface is characterized as sleek and contemporary. The additional AI elements, however, have been viewed by some users as visually overwhelming. Additionally, the AI functions may require a lot of resources, which could result in increased CPU and memory utilization.

Pricing and Accessibility: Comet is currently only accessible to Perplexity Max customers, who can pay a hefty monthly subscription fee, and is an invite-only browser. In the future, a free tier with restricted capabilities is anticipated.

Privacy & Security: Comet emphasizes balancing AI assistance with strong privacy and transparency safeguards for user data.
Business & Developer Use: The technical architecture supports future opportunities for developer APIs—allowing web apps to tap into Comet’s AI directly.
Limitations & Growth: As of mid-2025, many agentic features are in late-beta, with further refinements and increased capabilities expected, including more personalized and proactive AI-driven experiences.

Comet AI Browser stands out for its agentic capabilities—going beyond simple search to actively assist and automate tasks during browsing sessions, making it a true “thought partner” for users.

Agentic Browsing & Comet Assistant:

A sidebar assistant built into the browser can comprehend the content of the current webpage and respond to queries or carry out operations that are directly relevant to what is displayed on the screen.

In order to automate multi-step activities, agentic browsing enables the AI to independently investigate subjects, compare items, summarize content, and occasionally act (such as making restaurant reservations or sending emails).

Contextual Awareness: By tracking the user’s movement between tabs and pages, the assistant can comprehend context and enable functions like comparing tabs, summarizing numerous pages, and informing users about future events and calendars.

Automation & Workflow: Comet seeks to streamline research and productivity by automating repetitive operations including email summarization, tab management, page navigation, and information assembly.

Conversational Interface: Users can “think aloud” while browsing, enabling the AI to assist with research, shopping, scheduling, and content digestion in ways that aren’t possible with conventional browsers.

In summary, Comet represents a fundamental reimagining of how we use the internet, not merely a browser with AI elements added on top. It’s a daring and promising introduction into the market that shows the potential of genuinely intelligent and proactive browsing, even though it’s still in its infancy and has some bugs to iron out.

What are the limitations of Comet AI’s current automation capabilities

The Comet AI Browser’s current automation capabilities include the following primary limitations:

Platform Restrictions: Comet is only compatible with Apple Silicon Macs (M1/M2); users of Windows, Linux, and Intel Macs are not eligible. The pricing is high ($200/month at launch) and access is invite-only, which restricts wider adoption to professionals and power users.

Agentic Feature Reliability: Although agentic browsing shows promise, it has trouble performing multi-step, complex operations like shopping, making travel arrangements, or completing complicated paperwork. The AI could enter dates incorrectly, misinterpret user meaning, create “hallucinations” (confident but incorrect behaviors), or result in errors and dead ends.

Performance Issues: Benchmarks (such as Speedometer 3.1) show that the browser is still slower than Chrome for some tasks. When compared to manual workflows, heavy agentic tasks could lag.

Transparency & Trust: Users have complained that automated actions are difficult to trust or validate due to a lack of thorough logs and activity histories. Task execution mistakes or discrepancies do happen.

Contextual Reasoning: The AI sometimes struggles with high-context activities since it doesn’t fully comprehend complex web app architectures or subtle user objectives.

Privacy Tradeoffs: Comet needs a lot of system access (emails, calendars, documents), which can worry enterprise users who are subject to regulations or privacy laws.