Dear Reader,

Browsers Are Getting Smarter

I’ve been testing web browsers that can now book hotels, fill forms, and chat with PDFs. It’s making me rethink what browsers are actually for. Remember when browsers just showed you web pages? Those days are ending.

I’ve spent the last week doing early testing on two browsers - Dia from The Browser Company, and Comet from Perplexity that treat AI as a first-class citizen, not an afterthought.

Let's get to it.

What These Browsers Actually Do

Dia is designed to help you write, learn, plan, and shop - right where you already work online. It can:

• Edit and improve your writing directly in any text box, so you don’t have to copy and paste between apps.
• Summarise articles, break down complex ideas, and help you understand both sides of an argument as you browse.
• Create to-do lists, translate text, and help you organise information instantly, acting as a personal assistant that’s always up to speed.
• Compare products, analyse reviews, and help you make smarter shopping decisions without leaving your current tab.

Comet is described as "a smart digital research assistant that lives in your browser", capable of:

• Searching the entire web in real time, summarise articles, compare products or services, and pull together key points from multiple sources—sometimes even handling things like booking a hotel or making a reservation for you.
• Paste in any document or video link, and it can (also) read, summarise, or extract action points and quotes - even turning transcripts into digestible bullet points.
• Filling out web forms, extracting data into spreadsheets, pulling reports, or performing routine tasks.
• Ask Comet questions in plain English (or another language), and it will work through problems with you, whether you need coding help, project ideas, or personal productivity advice.
• Creating your own private knowledge base from your own files, links, or notes.

Here’s a look at the good, frustrating, and surprising aspects of both Dia and Comet, based on both my own and public user insights and reviews online:

Dia (by The Browser Company)

✅ What’s Great

• AI-native workspace: Blends search, summarisation, and context intelligently. Users reportedly love the “AI assistant that understands your flow”.
• Local-first privacy: Encrypts most data locally, anonymises context sent to the cloud, and avoids sensitive content by default.
• Minimal, distraction-free interface: Sleek design, timeline-based history, and reduced UI clutter makes browsing feel fresh.

😣 What’s Frustrating

• Mac-only, limited access: Still in early beta requiring macOS on Apple Silicon - no Windows/Linux yet. You’ll need a fairly recent Mac (Apple Silicon, within the last few years) to try this for now.
• Missing beloved Arc features: Arc has been my favourite browser for the last two years, and The Browser Company stopped developing it for Dia. Early Arc users complain that Dia lacks many favourite tools - “fails to deliver most Arc features… UI is really lacking”.
• Hallucinations and AI misfires: Occasional wrong answers - e.g., misidentified AI models - highlight early-stage hiccups. Unfortunately this is something we all need to be aware of when working with AI.

🤔 What’s Surprising

• “Dia moment”: One user noted, “I finally had my ‘Dia moment… I don’t think I can ever go back,” highlighting its powerful novelty for certain workflows.
• Acts like a true agentic workspace: Early demos show Dia proactively managing sessions, tabs, and tasks - not just passive browsing.

Comet (by Perplexity)

✅ What’s Great

• Deep task automation: Can handle bookings, reservations, form-filling, schedule hunting - even whilst you continue working.
• Context-aware assistant: Sidebar AI that “automatically sees what you’re looking at,” no copy-paste needed.
• Seamless Perplexity integration: Becomes a natural extension for existing Perplexity Pro users with no extra cost beyond the $20/mo subscription.

😣 What’s Frustrating

• Learning curve: Initially slow for many “something clicked only after forcing myself to move on… first few hours felt far slower”.
• Privacy and user profiling concerns: Critics worry about mining browsing and form data for profiling or ad-targeting.
• Reliability varies: Task execution isn’t flawless; occasional prompt failures or inaccurate results undermine trust.

🤔 What’s Surprising

• Big-picture vision: Perplexity plans “Scheduled Tasks and Memory” to give Comet a persistent assistant memory.
• Publisher & platform tension: Comet intentionally bypasses Google and may reshuffle web economics and traffic—some see it as a challenger to Chrome’s dominance.

Should You Try Them?

If you're already in the Mac ecosystem and want to give either of these a whirl, it's worth it for the AI-curious. But, expect your browser stalwarts - Firefox, Chrome etc to start heading in this direction soon. ChatGPT is also rumoured to have a browser launching this summer. Likely to be tied to ChatGPT Plus subscriptions initially.

Comet is available to Perplexity Pro subscribers (£20/month). If you’re already paying for Perplexity, there’s no extra cost. Worth trying if you do a lot of research or online shopping.

Dia is free during beta but Mac-only and requires Apple Silicon. It's worth the experiment if you’re curious about AI-native browsing.

The Reality Check

Let’s be honest about the downsides:

Privacy: These browsers need significant data access to work properly. Even with local-first promises, most features require cloud processing. Read the privacy policies carefully.

Platform limitations: Dia is Mac-only. Comet is desktop-first. We’re still in early days for mobile support. For me, the lack of cross-platform session sync is a big missing piece, but that’s likely to improve.

Accuracy: AI browsers can confidently give you wrong information. Always verify important details, especially for bookings or financial decisions.

Learning curve: If you’re used to traditional browsing, these tools require adjusting your mental model of how browsers work.

What This Means for You

We’re seeing the early stages of a fundamental shift. Browsers are evolving from document viewers to task assistants. We've seen company after product throwing AI features into the mix for no visible purpose in recent years, but this is different - it’s about rethinking what browsers are for.

The question isn’t whether AI browsers will become mainstream (they will), but whether you want to experiment with them now while they’re still rough around the edges, or wait for the more polished versions that are surely coming.

I’ve heard that it can take a week or so to really hit a ‘wow’ moment with Comet, which I'm going to set as my default browser - I’m yet to hit that level - but I’m continuing to test these tools and will share what I learn. If you try any of them, I’d love to hear about your experience.

Stay curious,

Jim

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about AI tools that can improve your workflow, I’ve got some practical guides and prompt libraries that might help. Drop me a line if you’d like to know more.

Signal Over Noise is written by Jim Christian. Subscribe at newsletter.jimchristian.net.

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