On Wednesday, Perplexity launched its first AI-powered web browser called Comet, marking the startup’s latest efforts to challenge Google search as the primary venue people use to find information online.
Upon launch, Comet will be first available to subscribers with Perplexity’s $200 per month maximum plan, as well as small groups of invited guests who have signed up on the waitlist.
Comet’s heading function is Perplexity’s AI search engine. It is pre-installed and set as default, and places the company’s core products (AI summarise search results) at the front and center.
Users also have access to Comet Assistant, a confused new AI agent that lives in a web browser and aims to automate daily tasks. According to Perplexity, assistants can summarise email and calendar events, manage tabs, and navigate web pages on your behalf. Users can access the Comet Assistant by opening a sidecar on any web page. This allows the AI agent to see what is on the web page and answer any questions about it.
Perplexity has released several products and initiatives in recent months, but nothing more important than comets. The company’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, has exaggerated the launch of Comet in particular significantly.
With Comet, Perplexity aims to reach users directly without going through Google Chrome, the most popular browser at the moment. While AI-powered browsers present unknown browsers to many users, Google itself seems to be convinced that this is the direction the browser is heading. The search giant has deployed several AI integrations in Chrome in recent months.
Srinivas said in March that the goal with the comet is to “develop an operating system that can do almost everything,” and that Prperxity’s AI can help users of apps and websites. Becoming the user’s default browser can be converted to “infinite retention,” Srinivas said in June.
That said, comets are in crowded arenas. Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari own most of the market, but browser companies launched AI-powered browser DIA in June. Openai is also reportedly considering launching its own browser to compete with Google, and last year even hired a key member of the original Google Chrome team.
Comet could raise the first leg in a browser war if a meaningful chunk of bewildered users signed up for the product. Srinivas recently said Perplexity had seen 780 million questions in May 2025, and that its search products are seeing growth of over 20% per month.
Doing a Google search is not a small task, but by launching its own browser, embarrassment seems to have the right idea. However, startup teams may find it even more difficult to convince users to switch browsers than weaning them from Google searches.
Practice with comets
The most unique aspect of this browser seems to be the comet assistant. During testing, I found that Comet’s AI agents are surprisingly useful for simple tasks, but they quickly fall apart when given more complicated requests. To use the Comet Assistant for maximum potential, you need to be confused with unpleasant levels of access.
So far, my favorite way to use Comet Assistant is to load it into a sidecar while browsing the web. Perplexity’s On Browser AI Agent can automatically check what I’m looking at. So you can simply ask questions without having to open a new window or copy or paste text or links. It’s right there and it always has the context of what I see.
Comet Assistant was able to answer questions about posts written on social media, YouTube videos, and even Google Docs. I think this streamlines the workflow for millions of people sending screenshots, files and links to ChatGpt all day.
Next, I asked Comet Assistant to look up Google Calendar. But before I could do that, I had to give great access to my baffle on my Google account – a lot of access. Look at the length of this list.
I have to make me a little anxious by giving permission to view my screen, send an email, look at my contacts, add events to my calendar. However, it appears that AI agents are needed to help this kind of access.
Despite this, Comet Assistant did a pretty good job looking through my calendar. He notified me about upcoming events and provided advice on when to leave my home and how to navigate public transport to reach those events.
The assistant was also able to summarise the emails he received from a notable sender that morning. In my case, important startups and tech companies have the news for the future. We found that AI agents have a very difficult time to analyze what is important in their email inbox, but comet assistants did pretty well.
However, comet assistants fail on more complicated tasks. For example, I asked him to help me find a long-term parking space for future trips at the San Francisco airport.
The assistant offered some options that seemed to fit the criteria, so I asked me to book it. The agent navigated the parking website for me, went into the date and asked me to check out even some of my information and check out what it did.
After all, the comet assistant hallucinated, went into a completely wrong date and later said that the date I wanted was booked, but I wanted to complete the checkout anyway. I had to tell the AI agent that the date was unnegotiable and asked to find another location. It encountered the same problem again.
AI agents that ruin such important details are nothing new. My experience with Openai agents, operators, and previous shopping agents at Perplexity has resulted in similar results. Clearly, hallucinations prevent these products from becoming real tools. Until AI companies can solve them, AI agents are still novel in complex tasks.
Nevertheless, Comet appears to offer new features that will only be perplexing in the competition in modern browser wars.
