Artificial intelligence (AI) could soon herald the biggest internet shake-up since dial-up gave way to WiFi.
With Perplexity AI in talks to reach a $14 billion valuation as it seeks to launch its own browser, Comet, to compete with tech giants like Google, AI might already be poised to do to traditional internet and information gateways what WiFi did to the ethernet cable.
At the center of this potential shift are companies like Perplexity, OpenAI and other startups both implicitly and explicitly challenging big tech’s long-standing dominance in web access, with the goal of making traditional internet interfaces obsolete thanks to the natural language-based— and increasingly multimodal — capabilities of AI’s own digital retrieval dashboards.
Forget clicking through pages of blue links. Today’s consumers want answers for their queries, and they want them to be immediate and packaged for consumption. AI can help do that in ways that traditional page rank algorithms and web access browser software often can’t.
Picture this: Instead of typing “best Italian restaurant in Brooklyn,” users can ask an AI agent — which knows their budget, dietary restrictions and maybe even blood pressure — and in seconds the reservation is booked.
Welcome to the AI interface era of the internet, and, one day, even commerce.
Read also: It’s a ’90s Browser War Redux as Musk and Meta Enter AI Race
AI Agents Emerge as New Digital Gatekeepers
From Netscape to Chrome, browsers are digital windows to the world. Users typed, clicked, scrolled and hoped that somewhere, buried beneath the SEO spam and banner ads, they’d find what they were looking for. But that era is potentially poised to quickly circle the drain as AI comes to control a greater share of the flow of information.
ChatGPT.com is now the fifth-most visited website in the world, with Google.com on top, followed by YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
The news that Perplexity is developing its own web browser, Comet, that is expected to include agentic AI capabilities and the ability to automate certain tasks, is already showing that how users find things, how they buy things and even how they know things, could increasingly be up for grabs.
Instead of opening a browser window and typing a URL, users may soon speak or text a request into an agent that goes out, searches the internet and delivers what they need. No tabs, no clicking and no endless scrolling.
That, at least, is the envisioned future. Those aren’t capabilities one might expect to be offered from Microsoft Edge, after all. It was reported Saturday (May 10) that the growing popularity of AI search has made investors in Apple and Google uneasy.
Still, incumbent tech giants such as Google and Microsoft are hedging their bets by stuffing AI directly into their browsers and making the web platforms feel more like copilots than windows. But long-term? The whole concept of a web browser may be absorbed into an ecosystem of intelligent, personalized, persistent AI agents.
See more: Microsoft Moves to Protect Its Turf as OpenAI Turns Into Rival
Navigating the New Frontier of Web Access
The advent of the agentic AI web experience could mark a transformative period in how users access and interact with information online.
At the heart of the potential evolution are large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. These systems are increasingly capable of understanding context, maintaining memory and executing multi-step tasks. But true agency requires more than linguistic prowess. Integration is key. APIs (application programming interfaces) now serve as conduits through which AI agents interact with apps, services and devices.
For businesses, agentic AI presents a double-edged sword. On one hand, it might open new avenues for customer engagement, operational efficiency and product innovation. On the other, it may also threaten to disrupt long-standing business models.
Consider the world of eCommerce. If AI agents are making purchasing decisions, traditional advertising strategies could falter. SEO, influencer marketing and even visual design may lose relevance if AI agents bypass websites in favor of direct API transactions. Brands will need to pivot, optimizing not for human attention but for AI interoperability.
Verifiable identity will also become crucial.
As these developments unfold, the way we navigate and interact with the internet is poised for significant transformation. The AI browser wars have begun, and the outcome will shape the future of the digital landscape.
