What it's like to use Perplexity's Comet browser
Perplexity's AI browser is far from perfect, but by giving you an agent, Comet fundamentally alters the experience.
Will Perplexity's Comet web browser change anyone's internet habits? I'll tell you this: it's already changed mine. I spent the weekend using the AI-powered browser, and I'm so far impressed with its ability to act as your own personal agent on the web. Even if it's far from perfect, the experience of using Comet feels like a shift: You're no longer alone out there.
Today's newsletter is all about my review of Comet, but don't forget that my monthly AI Quick Start class for journalists and PR professionals is happening this week on Thursday, July 17 at 1 p.m. ET. If you're just getting started with AI or wondering how to get better results from the AI tools you’re using, I'll get you on the right mindset as well as show several practical ways to apply AI to your work right away. Check out the full skinny below, then we'll talk Comet.
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Comet review: Perplexity’s AI browser is an agent that shops, searches, and saves you time
I've spent the past few days using Perplexity's Comet as my primary browser. Although the AI-powered web browser is generally only available to Perplexity Max subscribers—who pony up $200 a month for the privilege—as a Pro user, I was able to apply for early access, which I did on Day 1. I received an invitation to download Comet less than 24 hours later.
Ever since, I've worked to move my entire personal and professional activity over to Comet to see if Perplexity's flavor of AI actually enhances the everyday web experience. And I can confirm it does. After using Comet to help accomplish all kinds of browser tasks, from analyzing videos to buying shaving gel, I had a feeling similar to seeing ChatGPT write an article for the first time: a new experience—one that may be in need of refinement, but is undeniably transcendent.
At first glance, the Comet browsing experience doesn't look that different from your typical Chrome browser, which makes sense since both make use of the same code base, Chromium. Aesthetically, they're almost identical—even more so if you import all your bookmarks, web history, cookies, passwords, etc. to Comet (which I did). The main differences: an omnibox search defaults to Perplexity (of course) and there's an "Assistant" button in the top right.
The browser agent cometh
It's the presence of the Assistant that elevates Comet over a normal browser experience. When you click the button, it opens a sidecar panel where you can message directly with Perplexity. This is much more than just having a chatbot always at the ready—it means you have a chatbot that can see everything you're doing and can even perform many of the same tasks you can. It's effectively your own personal agent.
If you've tried out or seen OpenAI's Operator, you'll know what I mean: Once you tell the chatbot what you want it to do, it'll either act upon the window where you invoked it, or it'll open its own virtual browser to perform the task. And because Comet has access to everything your browser does, that's a lot of tasks!
I should note that the reason Perplexity's assistant can act as if it were human is because of a quirk of their Terms of Service. While AI bots generally need to identify themselves as synthetic, which can sometimes mean they're blocked, Perplexity bypasses certain defenses for user agents (as opposed to search crawlers). While that practice is controversial, it's rapidly becoming the standard (OpenAI and Google—who are both working on AI browsers—do it, too). It also means Comet's agentic abilities work on most sites.
Before I get into the nitty-gritty of using Comet as an agent, a quick word about two other features:
Perplexity search: Perplexity (among other AI providers) has provided the means to change your default search engine for a while, something I tried a number of months ago. I quickly switched back to Google for a simple reason: many of my searches tend to be for names where I'm just looking for the website associated with it. Perplexity does a decent job of intuiting this and puts relevant links at the top of an answer fairly quickly, but when it misses the mark, it's really annoying.
One-click summarization: Recognizing that one of AI's killer features is summaries, Perplexity provides a small standalone button that tells the Assistant spit out a simple summary of any web page. For articles, I found it's usually about four paragraphs. It's a nice convenience, but nothing groundbreaking.
Let's get into what is groundbreaking: the Perplexity Assistant performing tasks for you, which I'm going to refer to as an agent. You can argue the exact definition of the term (as I've done many times with various people), but what the Assistant enables—an AI that can browse and act independent of you—is what most people will think of as an agent. If anything, Perplexity is underplaying what it can do by calling it an Assistant.
And holy cow, can it do a lot.
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