The AI Browsers That Made It Into Our Daily Workflow
Rhea Purohit / Vibe Check
Length24m
About this audiobook
This Black Friday: Get 25% off a paid Every subscriptionwhen you upgrade—full access to Every’s AI tools, expert courses, model reviews, and hundreds of essays. Offer ends December 1.Upgrade for 25% offWas this newsletter forwarded to you?Sign upto get it in your inbox.For a decade, browsers have been the least sexy part of the internet experience. Google Chrome dominated so thoroughly—over70 percent global market share—that it felt like the conversation was over. Apple’s Safari stayed by virtue of pre-installations on Macs and iPhones. Firefox retreated; Microsoft’s Internet Explorer quietly retired.And then, out of nowhere—well, notnowhere, as loyal Every readersmight remember—the ground shifted.AI browsers—a web browser with AI woven into the experience of using the internet— fromOpenAI,Perplexity, andThe Browser Companyall arrived, packaged in flashy launches. The browser wars are officially back.Many members of the Every team have switched over to an AI browser, but a near equal number still use Chrome or independent browser Brave—proof of how nascent AI browser use is, even among the tech curious. The unconverted say that humans can still do many tasks faster than the AI agents baked into AI browsers. Worse, you often have no idea when—or whether—it’ll finish a task.We dove into the AI browsers that the Every team are using, how they fit these new AI features in their workflows, and what they still wish was better. We’ve also asked those who don’t use AI browsers what they would like to see improve before making the jump.Before we get into the specifics of each browser, here are the browsers that the team is using.Every illustration.Atlas: OpenAI’s browser that brings ChatGPT to every corner of the webThe Atlas home page, with recommendations for what to search next. (Screenshot courtesy of Rhea Purohit.)In the last week of October, OpenAI finally releasedits long-awaited browser:Atlas. It’s available for anyone to download and use, even if you’re not paying for ChatGPT. The browser is currently macOS-only, with support for Windows and other platforms on the way.Paid users get additional capabilities like Agent Mode, where you can instruct an AI to click around the web and complete multi-step tasks for you.Inside Every,Anukshi MittalandVictor Stepanov—both tech-forward generalists—are the browser’s most consistent users. Atlas makes ChatGPT, and the context it needs to be useful based on your browser patterns, available wherever you are on the web in a sidebar, eliminating the need to switch between tabs or copy and paste text from a website to the chatbot. “[I]nstead of taking a screenshot and uploading it…I can just open the tab and ask questions in the right side panel,” Victor says. “This alone already makes my life so much simpler.”The AI sidebar offers a space to ask questions. In the case of this Goodreads page, it offers tailored suggestions including summarizing the book and finding related information. (Screenshot courtesy of Rhea.)How Every’s team fits Atlas into our workflowsPut two AI agents together to generate first drafts for youNormally, when you ask Spiral to create a draft for you, it asks a series of clarifying questions—about the audience, tone, perspective, and so on—before doing so. Victor offloads this back-and-forth to Agent Mode. He gives the Atlas agent all the context it needs, tells it to open Spiral, and instructs it to answer Spiral’s clarifying questions just as he would. From there, the agent and Spiral carry on the conversation autonomously until the draft is ready for Victor’s review. “I give the agent all the necessary information and context, send it to Spiral with a note that it should ask all the necessary questions if needed, and follow up with Spiral on its own until it gets the writing done…they figure it out between themselves and get me [the] drafts delivered.”Also on the writing front, Victor calls out Atlas’s in-line writing assistant; as a non-native English speaker, it helps him articulate his thoughts more clearly without interrupting his rhythm.AI that adapts to your contextUsing the “personalization” field in the browser’s settings, Victor sets rules for how ChatGPT should behave in different environments—writing an email versus drafting in Notion, for example—so the model effectively puts on a different “hat” depending on where it is. “I just [typed out] every behavior I want it to follow when I have a certain page or website open,” he says. “It’s not fool-proof but it works most of the time.”Custom interactions that let Victor tailor Atlas to how he writes emails, product marketing copy, and internal docs. (Screenshot courtesy of Victor Stepanov.)Answer your questions as you readAnukshi does all her reading on Atlas, because of how easy it is to interact with the material —if she has a question, she can call up ChatGPT in the panel without having to shuttle between tabs. She recently used this feature to better understand the arguments inDan Shipper’s essay ondeveloping a new worldviewwhile living in a world with AI. Other AI browsers can do the same, but Atlas is the first one she’s used, and with OpenAI’s huge user base, she suspects many others are in the same boat.Let AI handle the drudgery you don’t have time forAnukshi hands non-urgent administrative tasks to Atlas’s agent, such as checking if a book was available at a public library she was visiting and looking up new restaurants nearby. She admits it’s too slow when she needs something done quickly, but for background chores, it’s ideal.Where Atlas could be betterBecome apaid subscriber to Everyto unlock this piece and learn about:What AI browsers keep getting wrong about the search bar (and why it drives users back to Chrome)What convinced some engineers to endure the pain of switching—and the dealbreakers that sent them backThe Every team’s holiday wishlist for AI browsersSubscribeClick hereto read the full postWant the full text of all articles in RSS?Become a subscriber, orlearn more.
