For decades together, browsing the web meant combing through static blue links…
However, we’ve come a long, long way since “Ask Jeeves” and even traditional search engines like Firefox, Edge, and Chrome, which defined an entire Internet era. What started as a static bunch of web pages has now evolved into something far more dynamic, and now we’re entering a new frontier of the agentic web. However, don’t confuse them for simply being regular browsers with artificial intelligence-powered (AI) plugins — they’re much, much more than that. Imagine our web browsers being able to actually use websites the way we do. And we don’t mean simply display them, but even complete tasks, interact with them, and execute workflows autonomously.
That’s exactly what the agentic web, or AI browsers, are doing. It’s the era of the smarter internet, and the internet knows that it’s smarter.
How Agentic Browsers Are Different From Traditional Ones
Traditional browsers follow a pattern: searching, evaluating results, clicking links, reading content, and then manually completing the actions. On the other hand, agentic browsing packs this entire workflow into a single instruction: we tell the AI what we want to accomplish, and it handles everything, from searching to executing.
Agentic browsers employ autonomous AI agents for navigating websites, interacting with web elements, and even completing tasks on behalf of us users. In fact, they actively engage with websites for doing everything: making purchases, filling forms, executing workflows — basically performing multi-step processes without any direct intervention from us humans.
In July 2025, Perplexity AI launched “Comet,” an AI-native browser built on Chromium, marking a new era in how we use the internet. It’s more than just a search tool; it features an in-built sidebar assistant that can not only book meetings and compare products, but even complete purchases. In fact, early users of the same reported a productivity boost of up to 10%!
Getting down to brass tacks, traditional browsers employ HTML and display images, responding to our keystrokes and clicks. We’re the ones always in control, whether it’s manually navigating across pages or completing tasks ourselves. Meanwhile, agentic browsers are empowering AI to do the work. So, AI agents are interacting with websites on our behalf instead of us using the browser to view websites. They’re not just navigating website layouts, but even interpreting content, making decisions about what to do next, and taking actions based on our outlined objectives.
The Great Question: Are Agentic Browsers Safe?
With AI browsers having crashed the surfing party, it’s necessary to ask: are they safe? After all, the 21st-century saying might as well be “With great AI power comes great responsibility — and risks.”
There are a lot of privacy and security implications to consider when using AI browsers. Firstly, there are certainly some security wins. Since AI browsers integrate sandboxing, malware blocking, and anti-phishing tools, they’re better at protecting users against web threats as compared to traditional browsers. For instance, the Sigma AI browser has end-to-end encryption, complying with global data regulations.
On the flipside, AI browsers are still evolving and can be a lot more complex due to their potentially early-stage software status and advanced AI functionality, thus possibly introducing bugs or vulnerabilities. Plus, some AI browsers are in beta mode or invite-only, which, while limiting exposure, reduces maturity.
A second concern is privacy. While quite a few AI browsers encrypt data or process it locally to protect user information, some features might still require cloud-based AI processing. So, the user’s personal information or browsing context could be transmitted to third parties, depending on the browser’s privacy policy and architecture. Since browsing activity is critical to many of the browser’s AI features, the browser could even read and process a user’s visited web sites —perhaps even the words the websites display.
However, some even believe that agentic features in browsers aren’t a deliberate design progress, but are a potentially harmful design flaw. Since we’re handing over control of the browser itself, it could blur the boundary between automation and assistance. What has begun as a convenience could quickly escalate into exposure of credentials, unauthorised access, and even impersonation.
In the end, it’s up to us to review every AI browser’s privacy documentation carefully and look for features like transparency about AI usage, user content for data sharing, minimal data logging, and local data encryption. It’s imperative to choose agentic browsers from the able stable of trusted developers who have transparent privacy policies, especially if we’re letting them handle sensitive data.
Final Words
With the advent of agentic web browsers, we’re on the brink of an exciting era where browsers are becoming autonomous, intelligent operating environments, blending browsing with intelligent assistance for a more customised and productive experience. This new generation of AI-powered browsers don’t just look for results; they act, reason, and even transact on behalf of users.
While this transformational shift is definitely an exciting opportunity, it changes things when it comes to cybersecurity, as they’re now the newest weak link.
In case you missed:
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