Perplexity launches the Comet AI browser

Background

For most of its history the web browser has been a passive window. A person types an address or a search query, clicks through pages, and copies what they find into other tools. AI assistants have usually sat beside the page rather than acted on it, answering questions about content the user has already opened. The idea behind an "AI browser" is to let the assistant use the browser itself: reading pages, moving between them, and filling in forms on the user's behalf.

Comet is Perplexity's entry into that category, and it is the company's attempt to move from answering questions to carrying out the steps a question implies.

What happened

On 9 July 2025 Perplexity launched Comet, an AI web browser^[1]. It was released for Windows and macOS and is based on Chromium^[2].

Chromium is the open-source browser codebase that many browsers are built on. Using it means a new browser does not have to start from zero on page rendering or web compatibility; the team can spend its effort on the parts that are different, which in this case is the assistant layered on top of the browsing session.

What the assistant does

Comet's distinguishing feature is that its assistant can carry out multistep browsing tasks such as booking meetings or shopping^[1]. A multistep task is one that cannot be finished on a single page: comparing several options, opening them one by one, entering dates or other details, and confirming a result. Handing that sequence to an assistant changes the browser from something the user operates into something the user delegates to, with the visible page still available to watch and intervene in.

Access and rollout

Access was initially limited to Perplexity Max subscribers and an invite-only waitlist^[1]. That staged opening kept the first group of users small and tied early use to the company's paid tier.

The restrictions were then loosened in stages. Comet became free to download in October 2025^[2]. It was released for Android on 20 November 2025 and for iOS on 18 March 2026^[3]. The order of the rollout — desktop first, paid subscribers before free users, then the two mobile platforms months apart — traces how a browser product usually spreads: from the desk where long tasks are done to the phone where quick ones are.

Security questions

A browser that can act on pages inherits a harder security problem than one that only displays them. The assistant reads content from sites the user did not write, and it can take actions with the user's logged-in sessions behind it. Researchers at LayerX Security described a CometJacking exploit that could exfiltrate personal data^[3]. Perplexity told Time it had independently found and patched the issue^[3].

The episode illustrates a general tension in this class of product: the same access that lets an assistant complete a task is what makes a successful attack worth attempting, and fixes have to arrive faster than the features that create the exposure.

Why it matters

Comet marks a step in the shift of AI assistants from chat windows into the place where most work on a computer actually happens. A chat assistant can describe how to book a meeting; a browser assistant can be given the job. That difference is what the product was built around, and it is also why the launch drew attention beyond Perplexity's existing users.

The rollout shows the commercial shape of that shift as well. Tying first access to a Max subscription made the browser part of a paid bundle rather than a standalone free product, and only later did it become something anyone could download. The mobile releases extended the same delegation model to phones, where the browser is often the main surface for shopping and scheduling — the two task types named at launch.

Whether agentic browsing becomes the default way people use the web is an open question, and Comet's history so far suggests the answer will depend as much on security and trust as on how well the assistant completes tasks.