As you may have heard, Perplexity, OpenAI, and others have announced AI browsers.

Today I am going to use one of these, Dia, to walk you through what it is, how it works, and what the impact this may have on media. 

What’s an AI browser? 

Unlike traditional browsers, AI browsers like Dia, Perplexity, and OpenAI’s new offerings integrate conversational AI directly into the browsing experience. This means users can ask questions, summarise articles, organise their digital lives, and even chat with specific tabs or files — all without leaving their browser window.

AI browsers:

• Integrate conversational AI directly into the browser rather than two different tabs. They still offer fully functioning chat as well as browser tools such as bookmarks, pinned tabs, split view, and extension support.

• Allow users to ask questions, summarise content, and interact with tabs, files, and browsing history from within the browser window.

• Offer the ability to reference and chat with specific tabs or uploaded files or even compare multiple tabs.

• Have different profile management tools, enabling users separate workspaces, passwords, cookies, and browsing history for different contexts.

What an AI browser, Dia, looks like in reality 

If you’ve followed this newsletter, you’ll know I’m a longtime Arc fan. I used Arc as my main browser for 18 months and was genuinely disappointed when development stopped — until I realised why. Rather than iterate on a product destined to be leapfrogged, they started from scratch.

Through Arc, I got early access to Dia, the next-generation browser with AI chat built in. My analysis is based mainly on using Dia since I haven’t tried Perplexity and OpenAI’s browser isn’t out yet.

The setup was straightforward: Everything was imported from Arc (and could be from Chrome and others), a few prompts (some, like voice, felt too broad — preselects would be easier), and I skipped the coding options since that’s not my world. Note the adblocking by default, which is not great news for media.

Use cases for the Dia browser 

Once set up, it works just like a normal browser but with chat to one side. At the top of the chat, you’ll see I have brought in two tabs for this chat.

Writing aide: As I often do with ChatGPT, I write notes and then ask the chat to help me shape it into an article. It summarised it well — so well I used it for the introduction to this newsletter. But it fell short of helping me write.

It’s in beta; it’ll get better. And ChatGPT already has these learnings so will be more helpful much more quickly, just as I suspect the Perplexity browser is for Perplexity users.

Searching aide: I am also researching speakers for INMA’s Media, Tech & AI week in Silicon Valley this October. For this I often watch videos of speakers to see if their knowledge base and delivery are the right fit. 

The AI browser makes this a lot easier. 

Summarising: The browser will summarise an entire Web site. See my chat to the right where I want updates based on my personal interests.

No need to click into an article or even to scroll through the home page. The mere presence is enough to get the information I want, based on my preferences.

Digging deeper: Asking questions about an article, podcast, or video can be done straight from the browser. 

Below you see two screenshots following up on one of the stories mentioned in the summary above. In the first of these, I ask for more detail. In the second, I ask what other media brands are saying about the story.

Note that I am still on the same New York Times home page. I haven’t done anything on site, not even scrolled. It’s all in the browser chat.

Building skills and agents: Dia has built in “skills,” aka agents. You can save prompts to do some work for you. 

I’ll dig into these more and report back, but here is an example I am sure will resonate. Dia can copy edit according to your specific style. This is hugely helpful for anyone who accesses their CMS through a browser or simply uses Google docs.

A few drawbacks: Any online change is uncomfortable, and it took me a couple of hours to really start working with it properly. Partly because it’s slow (queries took a minute or more) and a little clunky (sometimes it responded to the wrong part of the text), which is all part of a beta product. And partly because I needed to learn a few new commands, which didn’t take long, but most consumers won’t bother to learn until they have to or see a major benefit. 

One limitation — at least for me, as someone deeply embedded in Apple’s ecosystem — is that all commands run through the browser window. Since my workflow relies on Apple apps like Mail, Calendar, Notes, and Reminders, I can’t access a lot of the things I’d normally use. For example, I tried to set up a morning routine that would summarise my meetings, the day’s major news, and anything in my reminders list, but Dia couldn’t pull it all together. 

Browser summary: Dia is wonderful. Having used it for a few days, it’s already making me more productive. It’s easy to see how consumers will find this useful and how it will change user behaviour fairly quickly even if it’s a little buggy right now. 

But why does this all matter? 

Because whoever owns the browser sees how you work, what you do, where you go. They can personalise well for you, giving you great services, which makes it hard to leave. And in return, they get your data. They get access to everything you do online. Google makes almost US $200 billion from Chrome every year. It’s a big business.  

The AI browsers make many things you do online genuinely better. AI agents will soon be able to do a lot for you. Instead of “searching for flights,” your agent can book them simply for you.  It’s also going to be the start of a new AI business model. 

And what does it mean for news media?

From a media perspective, this shift is significant for several reasons:

• Personalisation and retention: AI browsers can understand user habits, interests, and routines by observing browsing behaviour. This allows them to deliver highly personalised experiences, making it more difficult for users to switch platforms — and giving browser owners unprecedented access to user data.

• Changing discovery: As AI agents become more capable, users may rely less on traditional search engines and more on chat-based content discovery. Instead of searching for articles, users might ask their browser for a news summary or have it interrogate sites on their behalf.

• Changing user experience: An AI browser allows a user to completely change how they interact with your content from summarisation, to asking questions, comparing and asking for alternate points of view. This is all done off your site and on the browser. 

• New business models: The integration of AI into browsers is not just a feature upgrade — it’s the foundation for new business models. Media companies must consider how their content is accessed, summarised, and potentially monetised in this environment.

• Internal efficiencies: If chat made creating content easier, AI browsers put that on steroids. It’s like Google Pinpoint + chat + writing tools all in one.  

Conclusion

For news publishers, the rise of AI browsers signals a decline in search-driven traffic and a shift toward conversational, agent-mediated discovery that puts users squarely in control. This will require new strategies for audience engagement, content licensing, and data protection.

The AI browser era is still young and may take some time for people to adapt to. But it’s clear news media must adapt quickly to remain both visible and valuable in this changing landscape.

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