Do AI Browsers Exist For You - or To Give AI Companies Data? (fastcompany.com)
- Reference: 0179927084
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/01/0514222/do-ai-browsers-exist-for-you---or-to-give-ai-companies-data
- Source link: https://www.fastcompany.com/91432707/openai-browser-perplexity-comet
New York Magazine's "Intelligencer" column argues [2]OpenAI wants ChatGPT in your browser because "That's where people who use computers, particularly for work, spend all their time, and through which vast quantities of valuable information flow in and out. Also, if you're a company hoping to train your models to replicate a bunch of white-collar work, millions of browser sessions would be a pretty valuable source of data."
Unfortunately, [3]warns Fast Company , ChatGPT Atlas, Perplexity Comet, and other AI browses "include some major security, privacy, and usability trade-offs... Most of the time, I don't want to use them and am wary of doing so..."
> Worst of all, these browsers are security minefields. A web page that looks benign to humans can include [4]hidden instructions for AI agents , tricking them into stealing info from other sites... "If you're signed into sensitive accounts like your bank or your email provider in your browser, simply [5]summarizing a Reddit post could result in an attacker being able to steal money or your private data," [6]Brave's security researchers wrote last week. [7]No one has figured out how to solve this problem .
>
> If you can look past the security nightmares, the actual browsing features are substandard. Neither ChatGPT Atlas nor Perplexity Comet support vertical tabs — a must-have feature for me — and they have no tab search tool or way to look up recently-closed pages. Atlas also doesn't support saving sites as web apps, selecting multiple tabs (for instance, to close all at once with Cmd+W), or customizing the appearance. Compared to all the fancy new AI features, the web browsing part can feel like an afterthought. Regular web search can also be a hassle, even though you'll probably need it sometimes. When I typed "Sichuan Chili" into ChatGPT Atlas, it produced a lengthy description of the Chinese peppers, not the nearby restaurant whose website and number I was looking for.... Meanwhile, the standard AI annoyances still apply in the browser. Getting Perplexity to fill my grocery cart felt like a triumph, but on other occasions the AI has run into inexplicable walls and only ended up wasting more time.
>
> There may be other costs to using these browsers as well. AI still has usage limits, and so all this eventually becomes a ploy to bump more people into paid tiers. Beyond that, [8]Atlas is constantly analyzing the pages you visit to build a "memory" of who you are and what you're into. Do not be surprised if this translates to deeply targeted ads as OpenAI starts [9]looking at ways to monetize free users . For now, I'm only using AI browsers in small doses when I think they can solve a specific problem.
>
> Even then, I'm not going sign them into my email, bank accounts, or any other accounts for which a security breach would be catastrophic. It's too bad, because email and calendars are areas where AI agents could be truly useful, but the security risks are too great (and [10]well-documented ).
The article notes that in August [11]Vivaldi announced that "We're taking a stand, choosing humans over hype" with their browser:
> We will not use an LLM to add a chatbot, a summarization solution or a suggestion engine to fill up forms for you, until more rigorous ways to do those things are available. Vivaldi is the haven for people who still want to explore. We will continue building a browser for curious minds, power users, researchers, and anyone who values autonomy. If AI contributes to that goal without stealing intellectual property, compromising privacy or the open web, we will use it. If it turns people into passive consumers, we will not...
>
> We're fighting for a better web.
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/27/1126673/openai-new-atlas-browser/
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-ai-browser-power-play/ar-AA1Puhmi
[3] https://www.fastcompany.com/91432707/openai-browser-perplexity-comet
[4] https://thehackernews.com/2025/10/chatgpt-atlas-browser-can-be-tricked-by.html
[5] https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/08/ai-browsers-could-leave-users-penniless-a-prompt-injection-warning
[6] https://brave.com/blog/unseeable-prompt-injections/
[7] https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/22/openai-ciso-on-atlas/
[8] https://help.openai.com/en/articles/12574142-chatgpt-atlas-data-controls-and-privacy
[9] https://searchengineland.com/chatgpt-with-ads-coming-454590
[10] https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-for-chrome
[11] https://vivaldi.com/blog/keep-exploring/
Like the Old Saying Goes . . . (Score:2)
. . . if you aren't the customer, you're the product.
Or with AI I guess your data is the product, and anything you might incidentally accomplish (learning, working, playing, earning, etc.) is a waste product, to be minimized accordingly.
There's probably car analogy that could express it better.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't mind giving Google data, but I don't give them everything. I mostly ask trivial questions related to e.g. cleaning, cooking, computers, math, chemistry, things I wouldn't mind even if someone finds out I asked those. If they can use that to improve their AI that is even better for me.
AI has been a great help for me, but I wouldn't pay for it.
It's supposed to be both (Score:2)
If the data is worth something then the companies are supposed to offer you something compelling in value enough to you for you to give it to them, at least that's what a market capitalist should answer to that but that's a theoretical scenario where the consumer has the knowledge and market power to make an informed choice including most importantly the ability to walk away from a purchase.
It is up to the individual to determine the value the product gives but I would say it's effectively impossible for th
If your browser can do anything you can, it will (Score:3)
Yeah giving an AI the ability to completely act as you, leverage your saved credentials, and respond to prompts from content you can't reliably inspect on random web pages seems like a bad idea.
Irritating! (Score:2)
I am increasingly bombarded by AI generated text. It seems that browsers, search engines, customer "service" and many app have incorporated AI. Even my Tesla now has the Nazi Grok AI as default.
Besides the obvious threat of monitoring my thoughts and behavior, I find all of these AI "services" very irritating. They serve up long winded rambling blocks of "information" which is usually at least partially wrong or irrelevant.
I really hate all of these AI efforts.
Did you really have to ask? (Score:2)
The title of TFS is so clearly and perfectly a "rhetorical question", that it could easily be used as an example of same in an official definition of the term.
I tried Comet (Score:2)
I couldn't find any use for it
All of the examples they listed seemed silly and useless
Re: (Score:2)
This version actually is useful.
[1]https://www.cometcleaner.com/ [cometcleaner.com]
[1] https://www.cometcleaner.com/
AI companies are... (Score:2)
... content and privacy rapists. Period. Draw the appropriate conclusions.
Anyone who needs to ask that question (Score:2)
needs a keeper to run their life for them.
Nobody could possibly be so disconnected from reality as to not know the answer to that, and still be able to walk and breathe at the same time without help.
This headline should be a sentence. (Score:2)
There is no reason to question that's what it's for.
Two usage scenarios come to mind. (Score:2)
First, AI companies want to know what problems people are using their computers to solve, so that they can train their LLMs to solve those problems, and then sell subscriptions to the resulting services.
Second, the AI companies know that high quality content is getting harder to find (because their own products are generating so much garbage). Watching user behavior may help them identify the pages that users find helpful, and pages that users find worthless. They will presumably use that information to gui
Give AI Companies Data? (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple!