The Comet Cometh

Perplexity’s AI-powered web browser is many browsers and their plugins wrapped in one. But what danger does it bring as it draws closer to our orbit?

C/2020 F3, also known as Comet NEOWISE. Photo for representational purpose, by Samuel PASTEUR-FOSSE on Unsplash

Lately, my Google feed has been buzzing with news, including X posts, of one particular individual. Or rather, the updates he lends to the world through the medium of the interweb.

But the blame doesn’t rest on the feed. Oh no.

It sits with me, who made the algorithm gods think that I was interested in what the person had to say. I mean sell. But the very first piece that started this chain was quite atrocious, to say the least.

If you’ve been fortunate enough to not pay heed to the hype, let me shatter your peace by witnessing the post for yourself:

To visit the post, click on the image.

Of course, all this was wrapped in a neat article by the Economic Times. That lends it some credible weight in the news circles, don’t you think?

But before we go any further to study what this comet predicts in the star charts of humanity—if you can pardon my wanton usage of this astrological association—let’s try to understand the foundation from which Perplexity AI, and by extension Aravind Srinivas, are flinging their space rocks, shall we?

The Trail of Jettisoned Freedom

Privacy is one hell of a gimmick these days. Take the notorious Apple ad touting iPhone’s—erm, well, how do I phrase it?—“unmatched” privacy in the hands of the user.

Incredible concept, to be honest. And like every other conman, Apple tells you in your face that they’re concerned, as their remarkable self-commissioned report creates a panic of privacy. But it’s that white-teeth lie that only gets the iPhone fandom excited. Because Apple, like every other company out there, values its users’ data.

Read that again. It’s a simple, subtle, blink-and-you-miss-it statement. It’s also the whole truth. Your data is more valuable to them, no matter the sentiments you attach to your purchases, photos, videos, or chats.

And keeping that data private from Apple? As this one Forbes piece on cybersecurity states, it’s virtually impossible. And it’s not the only report out there. Wired did a piece on how Apple’s privacy mythology doesn’t match reality, too. There’s another one, if you’re still hunting for thoughts to make a decision, by Stewart Consulting.

Now, why did I digress to Apple when we started with Perplexity AI? It makes for the best baseline to shower our thoughts on. I believe everything will stick its landing with Apple’s feigned ignorance.

Because Perplexity—the ever-useful ChatGPT rival, budding research assistant, co-pilot to your thoughts, available as a browser plugin—AI is the product and a competitor of the same ecosystem. Just like its AI brethren, it’s already notorious for bleeding dry copyrighted property. Here’s an icy trail of these for you to observe:

• Associated Press coverage on Perplexity plagiarising a Forbes story without crediting them

• BBC lawsuit against Perplexity for crawling and duplicating their content verbatim

• New York Times sending a cease-and-desist to Perplexity to stop scraping data from their website

• Wired, along with web developer Robb Knight investigating how Perplexity does not honour a protocol that limits web crawler scraping of data.

Of all, I particularly love Wired’s heavy-worded approach, especially its catchy title. They’re not the only ones, though. Here’s a post on the Cloudflare blog about the company using undeclared crawlers stealthily. As a result, Cloudflare has blocked Perplexity to curb its deception.

In all these instances, Srinivas continues to breathe, very dutifully, rejection of these claims to save Perplexity’s image. Save image. Hmm . . . poetically ironic, I’d say.

Then, to top this fantastic blend of punch with a sugary vanilla float, Srinivas boldly goes beyond where every web browser has gone, with his Perplexity-powered Comet coming in hot with no-holds-barred tracking to sell hyper-personalized ads. Here’s what the CEO and co-founder has to say, as quoted from the TechCrunch article:

“. . .what are the things you’re buying; which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to; what are you spending time browsing, tells us so much more about you.”

“We plan to use all the context to build a better user profile and, maybe you know, through our discover feed we could show some ads there.”

Sounds like the makings of a dystopian episode of Black Mirror. You could argue all about information scraping and privacy breaches, about having easier access to the information you want. But then, the right to not let bots scrape a website should remain with that website. We could sit here all day discussing payment structures of this new frontier of the internet, but that shouldn’t take away from Perplexity cheating their way when entry is barred.

The company, despite all this, continues to fatten up with funds and revenues, because when did a businessman ever care about poor consumers? But what do we expect from a company that’s ready to partner with America’s far-right Trump Media and their Truth Social platform to launch an AI search engine?

I guess this is the disruptor wave that tech-bros and investors want to ride to high heavens, a technology that levels the playing field.

Sizing the Impact

Let’s get back to where we began, with Srinivas claiming that Perplexity’s Comet can even order food.

I saw a million comments praising this move, removing the middleman food aggregators from the process of placing an order for delivery (hyperbole, yes, but you get the point), but there were hardly any voices concerned about how the browser would do so.

I get it. You send a prompt, and it will take care of things on your end. The revolutionary agentic AI. But let’s not forget, the browser will need access to:

1. The restaurant’s portal, with your account ID

2. Details of your bank account, credit or debit cards, or UPI-like QR code interfaces to carry out transactions

3. OTPs, passwords, and a swathe of credentials to finalize everything

4. Notification, email, or text message channels to keep you updated

All this seamlessly fits within the tracking trail that Comet is going to leave in its wake, closely monitoring your activity. Less science fiction and more privacy horror. But that’s just my personal opinion.

Srinivas (beautifully this time, because selling the product is his duty) ties a flashy bow to all this, praising their browser whooshing past the in-between and zeroing in on the source—the restaurant, in this case—to order food. I, however, see through this smoke and ice-trail a backdoor free access to all things you might not really want the AI to see.

But if you’re already using these platforms to write emails for yourself, perhaps you’re comfortable in exposing the flesh that lies beneath the skin? Perhaps, you find it all inevitable, a Lovecraftian future where there’s no running away from privacy intrusions? And you’d rather defend this disgrace than accept the truth. No? Aren’t you using Apple? Or Google? How much of your data floats as digitized ghosts within the World Wide Web?

Sure, dodging the food aggregators will save you a couple of bucks, but is it enough of a price to barter away your freedom?

Although the browser remains invite-only for now, Perplexity is handing these out every single day, as Srinivas makes sure to remind everyone through his X posts. He’s also gone ahead to point out how the browser will be the do-all fix, even replacing some of the traditional roles within an office.

Prompts or no prompts, that should at least make some of the white collars sweat. One day, this comet might just come for all our jobs. At least there won’t be any privacy concerns as these applications will have levelled the playing field, right?

In thinking of the impact this new browser will bring, I’m reminded of a crater in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, named after the town of Chicxulub Pueblo. This is not exactly a grave, but it’d be remiss to not call it the tombstone that marks the death of Cretaceous and the once-mighty lizard- and bird-hipped reptilians that we now see bones of in museums.

This crater was created by an asteroid. An asteroid that came out of nowhere and levelled the playing field.