Are You Using AI Browsers For Your Tasks?

Hello,

This is Simon with the latest edition of The Weekly. In these updates, I share key AI related stories from this week's news, list upcoming events, and share any longer form articles posted on the website.

When generative AI first entered our consciousness, it came in the form of separate chat interfaces. These days, though, it is becoming ever more embedded into the tools we already use. Nearly every major company now offers a more integrated way to use AI within their systems.

One example is the web browser. Google's Chrome is still the most dominant, with around 65–70% market share according to StatCounter, but several AI companies are now launching competing browsers with their assistants built right in. Two notable options are Comet from Perplexity (which I'm using right now) and Atlas from OpenAI, along with lesser-known options like Dia. All of them put an AI assistant directly in the browser, making it easy to engage with content on the page, handy for things like quick page summaries. Not only that, these systems can also "take over" your browser and actually carry out tasks for you in what's known as agent mode, where it can click, fill in forms, and navigate websites on your behalf.

I took advantage of this earlier in the week for an admin task I needed to complete. A system I was using flagged 11 uncategorised items that needed correcting. Instead of doing this manually, which might have taken me 10–15 minutes, I opened the assistant panel in Comet and asked it to handle it. It finished in 3–4 minutes. This was a multi-step task involving several forms with drop-downs and text boxes that all needed filling out, and it handled the entire workflow correctly on its own. It was a low-risk task, so I was happy to hand it off, but it still fascinates me that we can do this.

If you don't want to install a new browser, some AI companies such as Anthropic, have developed Chrome extensions that bring their assistant right into your existing browser. Claude's extension is also incredibly useful for taking action on pretty much anything in your browser window.

The future direction here could see us handing off grocery shopping, booking holidays, or even completing arduous tax returns. That said, we will need to build significant trust in these systems before we start letting AI take over.

Do you use any of these tools? Have you found they've changed the way you handle certain tasks?

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In this section, I’m going to bring to you a real world example of AI use. This week we take a look at how automotive giant BMW, uses AI to improve manufacturing performance.

In what is seen as a big win for the creative industries, the UK government said it will examine labelling for AI-generated content as part of wider copyright reforms, while also looking at digital replicas, creator control, and support for smaller creative organisations.

Why it matters: The move suggests the debate is broadening from “can AI train on this?” to wider questions of transparency, trust, and how AI-made content should be identified.

Roche said it is significantly increasing its AI computing capacity with more than 2,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs across the US and Europe, giving it what Reuters described as the largest GPU infrastructure in pharma. The aim is to accelerate modelling, data analysis, and clinical trial work, and ultimately shorten drug development timelines.

Why it matters: Large companies are starting to treat AI infrastructure as a strategic capability tied directly to speed, cost, and competitive advantage.

Reuters reported that Meta is planning sweeping layoffs, potentially affecting more than 20% of staff, as it tries to offset the cost of heavy AI infrastructure investment and capture AI-driven productivity gains.

Why it matters: This is part of the ongoing debate of whether AI will take our jobs and puts more pressure on leaders to explain where AI is boosting productivity versus where it is genuinely changing headcount plans.

Thanks for reading, and see you next Thursday.

Simon,

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