Why use a generative AI browser?
On a recent episode of The Talk Show, John Gruber suggested that generative AI browsers, most notably ChatGPT Atlas, lack use cases.
I'm sympathetic to Gruber's take: it is much easier to see why usage of ChatGPT Atlas is good for ChatGPT than it is to see why it's good for the user. But here are a few use cases:
- Browsing a forum that requires a login. ("Please browse around for a while and summarize all the most credible rumors about X.")
- Shopping. (I don't do this, but Joanna Stern does.)
- Helping me migrate my blog to Bear.
What do these things have in common?
- They're predictable enough that AI is good at them.
- They're not easily scriptable, because API access isn't available and/or they require a bit of judgment.
- It's pretty easy to catch and fix bad outputs.
- Costly mistakes are either impossible or easy to avoid.
There's an argument to be made that this category of task might go away. Take shopping: online grocery stores might expose tools that allow you to shop with generative AI without using a browser, or third parties might develop new AI-assisted shopping tools. (Some of this is already happening.)
That said, a lot of us do things on the Web that are time-consuming and don't require that much good judgment. As long as this remains true, there's at least an argument for being comfortable using an AI-first browser.