The Auto Browse agent is available to AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers, but there are some limits.
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Google begins rolling out Chrome’s “Auto Browse” AI agent today
- Thread starter JournalBot
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The real question: can Chrome AI Browse watch and click-through ads for me so that I don't have to? An AI-powered ad blocker would do a great deal to make the web more usable again, especially on mobile devices.
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Even better, agentic AI can watch those ads and then purchase the products in the ads. This saves you from needing to let the ads permeate into your subconscious before buying the products
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I can't wait until I no longer even have to browse the internet at all. AI does it for me. I will miss reading Ars though.
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I'm really hoping they include an easy way to kill it when they open it up to non-subscribers
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Why AI?
No shortage of mobile browsers with adblocking. I use Firefox with ublock origin and haven't seen advertising in years.
Edit: I agree with your point - I watch people browsing without an adblocker and it's utter insanity .
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Google is right - clicking autofill on a form was way too much work. I was waiting for a solution just like this, with lots of data transfer to Google, maximum energy usage, and an eventual agent API bill so I can finally autofill a form more easily.
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What tedious tasks are there in Chrome? Closing tabs, cleaning up bookmarks... not something I'd want to hand off.
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timeline404
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Google AI browsing the web to find content written by ChatGPT, hosted on sites running AdSense ads served by Google.
The Ouroboros is complete. Humans are no longer required for the ad economy to function.
The Ouroboros is complete. Humans are no longer required for the ad economy to function.
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Voix des Airs
Ars Praefectus
I wonder how much greater than one the ratio of AI data centers needed to do this to data centers actually hosting websites is going to be.
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The tedious Chrome task is keeping up with all the changes they make when they suddenly update in the name "progress"
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Ear-deafening cheers can be heard in scammer circles all over the world.
Let the AI auto-browsing exploitation wars begin... The lack of underlying AGI must be seen as a godsend!!!
Let the AI auto-browsing exploitation wars begin... The lack of underlying AGI must be seen as a godsend!!!
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You mean like YouTube ads or did you have something else in mind?
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You are reminding me of my parents, who have Netflix, watching reruns of shows on Cable with ads they could have just streamed. Visiting them and seeing cable TV after years without it is so weird now.
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I pulled the trigger last year and ditched Chrome entirely. Good luck retrying what AOL did ages ago and trying to make yourselves "the" internet Google.
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So it will search for porn, watch it for me, and...I'm not seeing how this is supposed to help me. Ok, it'll browse Ars and read articles for me and...still not seeing how this helps me.
Oh, maybe it'll be like how GMail helpfully tells me when an Amazon package is going to be delivered. It even displays that the package will be delivered tomorrow right above the email from Amazon telling me that the package has just been delivered. That was incredibly helpful when I was hoping to get crampons delivered before the Snowpocalypse (Yak Trax are amazing!).
Did someone just wind up asking an LLM what features an "AI browser" should have, and this was the result?
Oh, maybe it'll be like how GMail helpfully tells me when an Amazon package is going to be delivered. It even displays that the package will be delivered tomorrow right above the email from Amazon telling me that the package has just been delivered. That was incredibly helpful when I was hoping to get crampons delivered before the Snowpocalypse (Yak Trax are amazing!).
Did someone just wind up asking an LLM what features an "AI browser" should have, and this was the result?
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[COLOR=rgba(231, 228, 226, 0.87)]First thing we need is a wai to disable this shit.[/COLOR]
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Chrome is not installed on my PC, and is disabled on my phone, and has been for ages.
I won't be surprised if Mozilla shoots themselves in the foot with all that AI garbage too.
It depends on how far they go and whether or not you can disable it.
I won't be surprised if Mozilla shoots themselves in the foot with all that AI garbage too.
It depends on how far they go and whether or not you can disable it.
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I love how cheating on a school group assignment is provided as an example. Not even trying to hide it...
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I'm on Firefox now but intend to switch AGAIN very soon... I just need some good recommendations. Something that doesn't report ANYTHING home, doesn't use AI, and yet gets regular updates. Wishful thinking here is that it'll be a fork of something that isn't Chromium.
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I'm interested to see where this project goes, if anywhere. Fully independent browser built from the ground up.
https://ladybird.org/
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I'm still on Chrome from inertia. You can currently still manually install full uBlock. As soon as they pull that final kill switch, it'll be worth the effort to switch.
But as others have pointed out, Firefox is going in a similar direction with AI. Like @Dark Jaguar above, I'd love to switch to another browser than either Chrome or Firefox. I'd even pay a yearly subscription fee to get updates (because you have to keep updating a browser or it becomes insecure quickly). One that would avoid AI and give users full unfettered adblocking would be a dream.
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poke 532810
Ars Praetorian
I’ve switched to LibreWolf. It’s a privacy-first fork of Firefox, without any AI cruft.
Edit to add explanation of LibreWolf.
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Shouldn't we be able to ask Gemini to whip up such a browswer for us in a few seconds?
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LOL! Alphabet allowing its users to use AI to block/auto-mute/read ads for the client. Hysterical!
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I've switched to WaterFox: https://www.waterfox.com/blog/no-ai-here-response-to-mozilla/
EDIT: Relevant point -- the reason I chose Waterfox is because they have an Android version up in the Google Play store. IIRC you need to sideload most of the other Firefox forks.
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This is all rather flabbergasting What friction points do they think their AI can solve? Those examples are just head-scratching. I know that they are reaching for anything to shove AI onto but this one feels so wasteful.
Like the only real friction I have online is from ads. Ads that make loading a website slow, ads that reload and move text around as I try to read, ads that have lots of movement and distract from the content. And now they want ads in their precious new AI.
Like the only real friction I have online is from ads. Ads that make loading a website slow, ads that reload and move text around as I try to read, ads that have lots of movement and distract from the content. And now they want ads in their precious new AI.
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Honestly, I would like this if it can do it in the background. There are a number of sites I would like to support with an ad impression but...
I use ad blockers for two reasons, I'm never going to click an ad and I don't trust any of these ad marketers not to track me or verify the code running to be safe.
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Switch to Waterfox, it's an up-to-date fork of Firefox that makes a point of lobotomizing out any telemetry or AI BS that Mozilla adds in. It's my go to browser of choice for most things.
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I can extrapolate the conversation went thusly:
Ars: Will you use page contents processed by Auto Browse to further train AI models?
google: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahaha ha!
Ars: Can you provide specifics?
google: Haha ha ha! No. Haha ha ha haha ha haa ha ha!
It's grand that this technology, once limited to click farms, is now available to all.
Still, it would be interesting to see how well Auto Browse™ works on that cat news site I read for the pict...articles.
Ars: Will you use page contents processed by Auto Browse to further train AI models?
google: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahaha ha!
Ars: Can you provide specifics?
google: Haha ha ha! No. Haha ha ha haha ha haa ha ha!
It's grand that this technology, once limited to click farms, is now available to all.
Still, it would be interesting to see how well Auto Browse™ works on that cat news site I read for the pict...articles.
You can stream ads on demand now? What a country!
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I'm curious about how it interacts with ads.
Does it show ads, even though there is potentially no user watching? If so, those are effectively phantom clicks. Someone is paying for those ads to be shown to a person, and getting cheated.
If it shows ads, does it treat them like page content? If so, there is room for malicious content that directs the AI to take actions.
Does it change the user agent or otherwise signal to the website(s) that it is an AI, or does it present itself as a human browsing?
Does it show ads, even though there is potentially no user watching? If so, those are effectively phantom clicks. Someone is paying for those ads to be shown to a person, and getting cheated.
If it shows ads, does it treat them like page content? If so, there is room for malicious content that directs the AI to take actions.
Does it change the user agent or otherwise signal to the website(s) that it is an AI, or does it present itself as a human browsing?
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Just in case you're not aware, the developer behind WaterFox previously sold it to an advertising company.
While he now has control of it again that goes to show he's not above selling users for a nice payout. That fork shouldn't be trusted.
My recommendation is LibreWolf.
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poke 532810
Ars Praetorian
The DDG browser is available for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac, but not Linux. I do use the DDG browser on iOS, but I use LibreWolf on Linux as well as on Windows so I can have a consistent browsing environment on both platforms.
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I came to the comments expecting to see all kinds of examples of who this is for and what exactly it’s supposed to do. Glad to see most are just as confused as I and that the answer is mostly nobody, and nothing, respectively.
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