Perplexity is among the many AI companies that has spent years extracting value from the internet in exchange for little. Its crawlers have synthesized endless amounts of content from publishers, even working around publishers’ attempts to block this behavior, all so Perplexity can summarize content without having to send traffic to the websites themselves.
Now Perplexity and its rivals are going a step further, with a new wave of AI browsers that can navigate pages automatically. Perplexity has Comet, OpenAI has ChatGPT Atlas, Opera has Neon, and others are on the way. The pitch is that AI “agents” will soon be able to trudge through the web on your behalf, booking your flights, buying your groceries, and shopping on sites like Amazon. Both Perplexity and OpenAI view these browsers as imperative in their goals to build AI “operating systems” that can manage your life.
Amazon, which has a lot to lose if people stop accessing its website directly, is suing to stop that from happening. It’s been trying to block Perplexity, but so far to no avail.
Therein lies the irony: These AI browsers promise a future where you’ll never have to visit a website again, yet that promise depends on having viable websites to crawl through in the first place. Amazon’s lawsuit is a sign that these two goals may be incompatible.
Feeding the beast
For companies like Perplexity and OpenAI, web browsers are suddenly important because they open the door to content and data that would otherwise be inaccessible.
