Perplexity Comet isn't the first AI-powered web browser to arrive. That honor goes to Dia, but thanks to the popularity of Perplexity as an AI-enabled search engine and chatbot, it's getting a lot of attention. It deserves it.

An agentic browser, Comet isn't just a web browser with AI glued to it, as are Chrome with Gemini and Edge with Copilot. It's designed from the ground up to use AI to automate tasks and improve your workflow. 

Also: Perplexity's Comet AI browser is hurtling toward Chrome - how to try it

Its architecture is built around an AI assistant, Comet Assistant, that lives in a sidebar. There, it can work on the content of any active webpage. So, for instance, you can ask questions about YouTube videos, analyze Google Docs, or summarize articles without leaving your page or other open tabs. You can also use it to perform such tasks as booking meetings, making purchases, or signing up for services. 

In short, Comet Assistant is context-aware, able to reference open tabs for research, summarize content inline, and answer questions about web pages without copy-pasting. This is especially useful for tasks like comparing products across sites or analyzing information on the fly.

If you're the kind of person who keeps dozens of tabs open when you're working on a problem, you'll love how Comet can pull information from all your tabs to give you answers. 

The answers themselves come from the main Perplexity Large Language Model (LLM). As before, I found Perplexity to give good answers, generally speaking. Better still, since Perplexity cites sources for everything it tells you, it's easy to ensure its responses are accurate. Let me add, for those of you who want AI to solve all your questions without work, you need to check those citations. Like all LLMs, Perplexity still frequently gets facts wrong. Always, always double-check its responses.

Comet is built on Google's open-source Chromium -- yes, it's yet another Chrome-based browser -- so it should be compatible with almost all Chrome extensions, and seamlessly import your bookmarks and settings.

That proved to be the case when I tested Comet on my Apple 2023 Mac Mini with an M2 processor and 8 GB of RAM running macOS Sequoia 15.5. Indeed, the setup process took mere moments, with all my Chrome bookmarks, extensions, and logins transferring over smoothly. For now, the only way you can install and run Comet is on a Mac with an M processor.

Comet will not run on an Intel-powered Mac. I know. I tried it just for giggles on my Intel-based Mac mini. I liked my old Macs, but it's past time to move on.

Eventually, you'll be able to run Comet on Windows, but it won't be in the next few days. Sometime after that, Comet will be available on Linux. While the browser itself is free -- and always will be -- for now, you must also be a Perplexity Max tier subscriber, which costs$200 per month to use it fully. Even then, not everyone will get it immediately. Perplexity is rolling it out gradually to waitlisted users. As users are added, new ones will receive a limited number of invites to share.

Also: Perplexity joins high-powered, high-priced AI race - here's everything 'Max' includes

If you can't wait, you can download the program for the Mac today. However, it won't be fully functional unless you've received an invitation. The one feature you will be able to use in Perplexity will be able to read your current tabs and use their information to answer your queries. You'll also frequently see an error message telling you, "Your Comet experience is restricted." 

Once I had it installed, I found it worked quickly, but its performance wasn't outstanding. Rather than just relying on my impression, I benchmarked the program with Speedometer 3.1. This is an open-source web browser benchmark that measures Web application responsiveness by timing simulated user interactions on various workloads across many popular JavaScript frameworks and technologies such as React, Angular, and Vue. Started by Apple, Speedometer is now under the guidance of Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and Mozilla. On Speedometer, Comet had a score of 29.3, while Chrome 138, the latest version, scored 34.3. Keep in mind, however, as a beta program, Comet contains code that hasn't been optimized for speed yet.

I'm sorry to report that some of Comet's features are still not working well. In particular, Comet Assistance promises it could do all kinds of neat things with my Gmail and Google Calendar accounts, such as answering emails, booking appointments on my schedule, you know, the usual "How AI will make your life easier stuff." Spoiler alert: It failed. 

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Built on Google's Chromium, it should work smoothly with Google services. It doesn't. Specifically, while Perplexity Comet is designed to integrate with Gmail and Google Calendar and automate associated tasks, I had a heck of a time authenticating my Gmail account with it. 

My problem was that Perplexity Connector and Google kept refusing to sync with each other. Even after I got it nailed down, while Comet Assistant could read, summarize, and search emails or calendar events, it often failed to perform more advanced actions like sending emails, replying, or managing calendar invites. This is due to conflicts with Google security restrictions, which prevent third-party tools from executing specific actions on a user's behalf without explicit, repeated authorization. In many cases, Comet provided manual follow-up instructions, but that was a pain.

Of course, if privacy is a concern, you don't want to use Comet at all. While it includes a native ad blocker out of the box, according to its privacy policy, "Your input and output, such as questions, prompts and other content that you input, upload or submit to the Services, and the output that you create, and any collections or pages that you generate using the Services" will be kept by the company. So, if you give it access to your Google account, any data pulled from it will be in Perplexity's hands as well. 

This should not be a shock. If you use AI, AI will use your data. If you're willing to make the trade, any AI system will make that deal with you.

I like what Comet is trying to do, but it's just not there yet. Give it time. I think Perplexity will get it there. 

In the meantime, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas has grand dreams for Comet. At the June Bloomberg Tech Summit, he said, "If people are in the browser, it's infinite retention. Everything in the search bar, everything on the new tab page, everything you're doing on the sidecar, any of the pages you're in, these are all going to be extra queries per active user, as well as seeking new users who just are tired of legacy browsers, like Chrome." Yes, you're not reading between the lines, Google and Chrome are the target.

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