Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 565: OpenAI’s Agentic Browser: Is this the future of content consumption?

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the Everyday AI Show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. It's almost as if some of the big tech companies and startups got together and they said,

Starting point is 00:00:51 you know what? This is going to be the week of the agentic browser between some startups that have released some updated features and versions of their agentic browsers to perplexity releasing their comet browser to more users. And now a recent report talking about that open AI will be releasing its own agentic browser. And it's something we haven't talked about a lot on the show, but I think it's worth really diving into and investigating a little bit more, not just about the bigger picture of what is agentic browsing, but also the biggest AI company in the world is going down that route. And so what does that mean, not just for all of us, but how we consume content and on the services side as well. So I'm excited for today's episode.

Starting point is 00:01:47 I hope you are too. So welcome. What's going on, y'all? My name is Jordan Wilson and welcome to Everyday AI. This is your daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter, helping everyday business leaders like you and me, not just learn what's happening in the world of AI, but how we can actually leverage this information to grow our companies and careers. If that's you, that's what you're trying to do. You're in the right place. It starts here.

Starting point is 00:02:10 But if you really want to be the smartest person in AI and your department or at your company, you got to go to our website, your everyday AI.com. Sign up for the free daily newsletter. There, we're going to be recapping the key points and insights from today's show, but also keeping you up to date with everything else you need to know in the world of AI. So I'm excited for that. And if you want the daily news, sometimes we do it here on the live stream podcast. but I just go check that out in the newsletter today.

Starting point is 00:02:38 All right. This one's going to be a fun one because as a former journalist, I always take a lot of pride in number one, making sure anything that we talk about is well researched and factual. But I love talking to other journalists and people who used to be in journalism. And that's why today's one is, I think, going to be a great show because we actually have one of the reporters who just broke this recent, story about open AI going down this agenic browser route. So this is going to be a good one.

Starting point is 00:03:11 So live stream audience, please help me welcome to the show as we bring her on. Crystal, who is the reporter at Reuters for AI and startups. Crystal, thank you so much for joining the everyday AI show. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. All right. Let's just get straight to it. If people read our newsletter, they saw your story in there. But tell us what happened with open AI all of a sudden going down this agentic browser route. Thank you so much for featuring our story in your newsletter. It's definitely an interesting development for OpenAI. We have been following the company for a while and obviously everything they are planning

Starting point is 00:03:53 on doing, especially on the consumer side. Because you know, Chachapit, since it burst into scene, it has become the fastest the growing consumer product in history. And now it have 500 million weekly active users. So whenever Open AI release the next consumer products, if it gets adopted by one of the users of chat TBT, you will have an impact on the existing market. That actually led us to the reporting about browser.

Starting point is 00:04:22 And we are hearing they have been working on this project actually for almost a year now and are looking for a final launch this summer. Some of the features we have heard, which is pretty cool, is they're adding more agent systems into this browser. So think Chrome, but also with the interface of chat, GPT, that you can get a lot more information and actions done within the chat interface. Maybe you'll be doing a little bit less like tap switching, and you can make comments through the chat interface.

Starting point is 00:04:55 So it's all very exciting, and we're trying to get a glimpse and help you understand, and what it might come and how you might impact the current way people use and browse the internet. And in that one is, I think, very important. Like how people use and browse the internet because it's become a cornerstone, right? Like if you're a knowledge worker, for the most part, your day is in a browser. Right. So I don't think not everyone has fully been able to grasp what this means because, you know, very few people have been using an agentic browser because it is a little newer, right?

Starting point is 00:05:36 But we've seen other companies, the DIA browser, GenSpark, fellow AI, perplexities, one that they just launched, comment. So it seems like it's one of these categories, right, that seems to be exploding. What does that mean for the everyday business professional who's working all day, obviously, in a browser? Are things going to change overnight? How does this change how we consume? information. Yeah, I think it's really interesting to see this becomes a summer of browser wars.

Starting point is 00:06:07 Like you're seeing so many launches at the same time now adding Open AI to the list. And if you look at the background a little bit, browser has been this uninteresting corner of internet for a while because Chrome was just so good and so dominant with over 70% of the marketplace. And I think what Open AI has seen this opportunity is, since already have so many people, using chat GBT as the starting point of their everyday journey online. And also they're starting to use chat to replace some of their search behavior. So what if we provide a quote unquote, according to Open AI sources that we have talked to, the more optimized experience, which is more in the chat interface information and action,

Starting point is 00:06:54 instead of opening 50 browser tabs like I am right now. So it is really interesting to see that vision that they have. And I think it might have a really impact on the ecosystem of the internet. Because if you think about the fundamental economics of the internet, at least for a lot of the content owners, like publishers and social media, it's about, you know, getting the clicks and people going into the website and spend some time there. You know, you will see the ads and you may even click on the ads and make some purchases.

Starting point is 00:07:29 And that's how content creators on the internet get rewarded. And now, if a lot of things will be happening within this context window you have with chatDB on the front page of the browser, instead of all the tabs, I think some of the websites will get much fewer clicks and traffic. And actually, this is already happening. I'm hearing so many publishers are complaining about what they're seeing in the drop of traffic. So everyone is trying to figure out like what we do there, do we put? partner? Do we fight against this? It's very, all very active conversations. Yeah, I think we covered that

Starting point is 00:08:05 earlier this week. It was something like 35 or no, 37 of the top 50 publishers, according to similar web, I think, saw huge drops in traffic, mainly because of AI. So, okay, I have to ask, because the former journalist in me is wondering, what does this mean for the companies, the publishers, the journalists that are actually creating this content that large language models are, you know, using to serve these answers, right? Because you talked about clicks for a lot of publishing companies that maybe don't have

Starting point is 00:08:40 subscription services or, you know, monthly, you know, premium opt-ins to, you know, have more unlimited use of a certain website or a certain publishing company. What does that mean for these other publishers as these AI agetic browsers become the

Starting point is 00:08:56 norm? As a journalist slash content creator on the internet, I definitely spent a lot of time thinking about that and covering that as well, because from the industry perspectives, I think it's very interesting to see the approaches that AI companies like OpenAI and Perplexi as well as Google Mata of the World are taking. I think it's a mix of carrot and the stick approach when it comes to working with the publishers and content creators on the internet. I think one playbook that we can use as a reference is how people are gathering their training data when they train all the large language models. So you have seen in that age of era, players like New York Times sued OpenAI for using their content illegally. And that's still actively playing out in courts. But on the other side, you actually have publishers, you know, like AP, like Reuters,

Starting point is 00:09:52 and actually striking some deals with some of the players. Reddit is an example as well. If you remember that they signed this content licensing deal with Google that will pay them $60 million a year. So the comments from you and me on the users will be the training data for Google's AI. But at the same time, they also sued Anthropic for scraping their websites heavily. So last week, I talked to folks at a Cloudflare who oversees a lot of Internet's traffic. So they had this tool to help publishers to either block or you can use a pretty novel monetization way, which is pay per craw. So it's not pay per article, but every time I crawl your website, I need to pay you.

Starting point is 00:10:38 So I think people are experimenting a lot. And to your point, in this age with the new agentic browser and the search function, I would expect some of the AI companies are also behind the scenes having those conversations right now. who should we partner to get those content and actions needed in front of our, you know, 500 million chat GPT users or who we should, you know, just like trying to partner behind the scenes. And if some people do not want to partner with us, can we go to others and use that kind of tagging against each other? See, this company has the visibility and distribution on chat GPT and open ad browser, but you don't.

Starting point is 00:11:16 So I feel like that will be the approach they are taking here. Yeah, that's an interesting one, especially, you know, we covered that earlier this week, talking about CloudFlare's new pay per crawl, and also blocking AI bots and AI crawlers by default, right? So shutting off those, you know, big tech to like, I think 20 or 25 percent of the entire internet, I think could really change the future of training data and potentially bring future model quality down, potentially. I mean, is that something that you that came up and you're reporting at all? Or is that maybe looking too far down the future on what happens if, you know, these big tech companies are just able to get a little less or fewer, you know, pieces of high quality journalism into their training models. Well, besides worry about training models, I also just in general worry about as an, you know, internet users on the internet browser experience is like everything like internet was known as. it's like very diverse like different corners you can explore but now if the incentive is not quite there for people to create the most original content and it got rewarded for their content like

Starting point is 00:12:32 do people still have that incentive to you know put in there and I have heard this thoughts about you know for if you talk to like those website builders they're having talks about oh in the internet there will be special specialized websites built for AI instead of human because you wanted to be more optimized this for AI scrollers rather than human users. And that could, you know, require different UX design and that could require a totally different experience. I think that is just really fascinating to me. And also I want to add, we have spent all the time, you know, talking about the impact of a more

Starting point is 00:13:08 agenetic internet publishers, content creators. But potentially, if you talk to all the AI people, the optimized internet experience is just not just on a content side. They also want it to optimize the experience, the clicking, like think about booking and ordering. So I've heard like similar conversation happen. You may have seen an operator from OpenAI. This new browser will incorporate some of the capabilities that they will be able to go on other websites like order food delivery or maybe book a flight to you. And when I talk to those kind of a service providers, I think, there is a real debate going on, much mirror the ones that content creators are having is,

Starting point is 00:13:55 do we want to partner with them? Or do we just want to say no? Like, fend off our APIs, like not working with them because we want to own that direct relationship with our customers. So I do want to dig a little bit more into the details on the service side. But one thing I just completely forgot to ask, I kind of assumed everyone knows what an agentic, you know, browser is. But we didn't really go into the details. It's in your. story, but can you just describe a little bit? What's the difference, right, between a normal browser and an agenic browser, at least in the lens of what you reported for open AIs agentic browser? How does it work? You mentioned operator, like, like, walk us through it.

Starting point is 00:14:38 Yeah, for the record, I have not had the pleasure to try open up AI browser yet, but so I got information from my reporting with people who had direct knowledge. But from what was, but from what we know so far and obviously we'll get a better picture in a few weeks when they finally launched it. But from what are reporting so far, the browser will have like a default chat GGBT entry point where you can do search. You can use it as the way you're using now right now, but also you can make some commands and give it a bit more flexibility and power to potentially connect with it with other parts of the internet. And also you can maybe do some actions of switching back and force the tabs for you and following your more complex command.

Starting point is 00:15:25 So to your point, agentic in general is an AI system that can take actions. There are smaller ones on the basis level, for example, to browse an internet page that you ask the AI to do. Browsing itself is an agentic action, but it's like relatively a basic one. And there's more active and the complicated ones where it's taking, step-by-step action and they knows exactly what to do to perform a complicated task, for example, order a piece of specifically from this brand and deliver to this place. An agent has been a kind of boss word in AI for a while.

Starting point is 00:16:05 And I think the reason people have been talking about it is like it's such a great vision, right? Like you just see, oh, you don't have to do anything. You just need to give a command. But in reality, when I talk to people, work. those products, it's actually very demanding on the system because the room for error is very low. Remember, they have to follow step-by-step commands. So if you make a really big, like, hallucination on one step, you may not be able to just,

Starting point is 00:16:35 like, follow the whole command. And so that's so far, I think the age and experience is not, like, mind-blowing. It's not as cool as the demo show so far. Yeah. And I think maybe it's important to kind of dig into the, the, differences, right? Because as an example, you've brought up operator, right? And we've covered an operator plenty on this show. We've done the live demos. I haven't done anything yet with Project Mariner with kind of Google's version. But, you know, walk us through. What's the difference

Starting point is 00:17:05 between maybe using a computer using agent like operator, like Project Mariner, like all these others, versus an agenic browser, right? Because there, the AI lives, right? In the browser, right? In the you can't really get around it. What's kind of the difference between at least, you know, what you found out in your reporting? Is it just going to be performance wise, so much better, right? But I think that's where a lot of people might get confused. Yeah, I think it's more of a full service experience.

Starting point is 00:17:34 So think browser as kind of the interface or base where you can use amazing tools like chatDBT, like operator or other agents maybe come online in the future. Like we need a base to start. And the other interesting, I think most kind of important aspect of a browser being known as an unprofitable business is it does give, you know, the browser maker a lot of information of your online presence. And that's enormously helpful for them to either want to develop a business model in the future if it wants to be at targeted or it, you know, trying to decide on its next roadmap, what is the core use cases they need to focus on using agent. Oh, is it really restaurant booking? Is it shopping or is actually something more repetitive or, you know, simpler to some extent?

Starting point is 00:18:28 So I think that really the browser is like the foundation that let you perform different activities and interact with different agents. Thinking about this from a zoomed out perspective, I can't help but to think a little bit about Google's previous partnership that became under a. came under a lot of scrutiny with the DOJ with their, you know, paying $20 plus billion to Apple to become the default search engine, right? And how that really helped Google, you know, not that they needed it, right, but that helped them maintain their hold on that 90 to 95% share of the search market. Is the search market? Is the search engine going to become a thing of the past? And is it just going to be all about who has the bigger share of the, agentic browser pie?

Starting point is 00:19:27 Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in the Adobe Firefly app, the all-in-one creative AI studio. Powered by Adobe's Creative Agent, Firefly AI Assistant lets you start with your vision, just describe what you want, and shape the outcome as it takes form with the Assistant. The assistant orchestrates multi-step workflows, drawing on 60-plus pro-grade tools across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom Express, and more to help bring your ideas to life. You can also get started with creative skills, a growing library of pre-built workflows for common creative tasks, like batch editing photos, creating mood boards, portrait retouching, and creating social variations.

Starting point is 00:20:18 Every step the assistant takes is visible, so you can refine. redirect or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director. Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. I think it totally depends on how soon the agent browser can get really good. And so that is a question both on technology, user adoption, and how soon you get partnerships from other participants on this internet,

Starting point is 00:20:54 like web publishers, like service providers. But to your point, Google is in a very interesting position, even in this browser world, right? And they are actually facing an active, untrusted trial regarding whether their Chrome browser will be sold off or not. And guess who said they wanted to buy it? It's Open AI. So they said publicly that in April that, oh, if Chrome is forced to sell, like, we are in the market, we're interested in buying it.

Starting point is 00:21:23 So it will be interesting to see what the competition dynamics look like once Open AI gets out there, a browser. And, you know, that could may have an impact on the active trial on if this is still a monopoly in the market. And let's go into the competition piece a lot more because I'll say before the fourth quarter of 2024, it wasn't a competition. For my viewpoint, I can say that I'm not the reporter on this story, right? But Open AI was so far ahead of everyone else. And in December, Google came seemingly out of nowhere. And since then, it has been such a heated competition between Open AI and Google in terms of benchmarks on large language models, fighting for active users. But at the same time as the competition is heating up, they're also getting friendlier, right?

Starting point is 00:22:13 So in your story here, obviously Open AI choosing Chrome to build on top of Chromium for their agentic browser, but also one of your early. stories about the partnership between Google Cloud and Open AI. So how have you seen this kind of fierce rivalry still be very fierce, yet they're also getting friendlier and friendlier in some instances? I'm so glad you asked about this because I think the franomy dynamics between the big players in AI is one of my favorite topics following this because you got the best business story, personnel stories, and also money stories. So the dynamics between Google and Open AI, as you pointed out, is definitely a very fast evolving one.

Starting point is 00:22:58 And part of the background is Open AI was once known with this brawman's best relationship with Microsoft, who basically bankrolled its initial development and helped with this distribution. But since last year, they have actually been in a breakup process, like trying to figure out what's the new stage of their relationship look like. So if you are open AI, like you're knowing like you don't, you are not going to be exclusively tied to Microsoft anymore. That actually opens more door for you to get new partnerships that potentially means more distributions for your technology. And potentially you can use other relationships to get more compute, which is absolute number

Starting point is 00:23:44 one costs at AII lab like OpenAI. So what we have reported is on the compute side, they actually went to Google Cloud and signed a partnership there. They're telling them, oh, now we're not going to just use Microsoft. We're not going to just use our own Stargate because a lot of that are still being built right now. We also want to get some allocation from you guys. So if you are giving me the kind of power of compute to develop and also run. inference for a lot of our products. That's actually a good deal for us. And guess what? Google actually said yes, despite the competition that it has on search and now as we reported on browser,

Starting point is 00:24:31 because I think they see an opportunity there as well to potentially expand the pie for their cloud business, which they have always been, you know, the third behind the AWS and Microsoft. And they see an opening there. And that didn't affect. They are still being very actively, you know, competitive on other aspects, especially on consumer. It seems like there's been a lot of momentum and investment and time spent, rightfully so, with enterprise companies trying to move a lot of their day-to-day operations in the front end of large language models, right? You see different reports from OpenAI saying that more than, I think it's 90% of Fortune 500 companies are using ChatGPT, not

Starting point is 00:25:19 not on the back end on the front end. How might this whole agentic AI change that, right? Like, I know you can't see in the future. You know, you and I haven't been able to use this new open AI agentic browser, but, you know, has this come up in conversations or how do you think this might ultimately change how people are trying to bring in their work in their processes into this, you know, quote unquote small little box of an AI chatbot? if it's actually just getting bigger and bigger and, oh, it's the actual browser now.

Starting point is 00:25:51 Yeah, that's a really good point because I think that leads to another kind of an honest for question is what's a kind of an enterprise use cases for a browser? And how is that going to be your personal use cases? Like, if history taught us anything, I feel like Chrome is very much both consumer and enterprise product at the same time, which means if you get the best browser, you can potentially, you know, get like touch points from both market. And everyone is batting on like enterprise market is going to be the more profitable one because people are going to willing to pay for more.

Starting point is 00:26:24 So I think that opens a lot of questions about if you were to automate a lot of workflow and if it's already done on the browser and how much of the workflow can be automated using a browser and adding an AI agent services, which I think can be solved to some extent by the browser itself, but I think a lot of it, if you're talking about enterprise environment, it actually requires a lot of proprietary data that may not be available through the browser itself that needs to connect into more of your existing workflow and data resources. So without that, I think it would be really hard to make it like a truly different work experience with AI agent browser alone.

Starting point is 00:27:12 All right. So, Crystal, we've gone over a lot in today's conversation. You gave us some of the inside scoop on this exclusive story on OpenAI's new browser. Talked about how this might change both content, consumption, and services, how the enterprise might react to it in the evolving relationship between OpenAI and Google. But as we wrap, what should our audience be keeping their eyes and their ears on in terms of, you know, not just this Open AI agentic browser? but how it might impact, you know, business leaders on their day-to-day.

Starting point is 00:27:48 That's a really interesting question. And I like when you have an open question. I don't have a specific answer. But one thing that I find interesting is to pay attention to where AI is best at doing. Because as time involves and actually like being hearing different answers from people who are developed those systems, if you, you know, kind of zoom back a few years ago, you remember all people talk about was AI replacing some of the blue color workers or manufacturing floors and all that on robotics. And then when generative AI wave comes in, everybody was like,

Starting point is 00:28:24 oh, it's going to replace the knowledge workers and any like white color jobs that requires writing, whether it's marketing, writing or something else. And now the latest wave I have heard is actually AI. What AI has been really good at is to solve reasoning and math problems that has a very deterministic answer. So that's not going to be writing, but a lot of it's like coding and it's like a high value technical engineer type of jobs that people believe AI would be best at. So I think there's generally a lot of sentiment and uncertainty about job replacement in the AI agent right now. And we had Reuters of also spending time, you know, covering that impact on the society in general. But from like talking to the tech insiders, how perspectives around that

Starting point is 00:29:09 evolve is very fascinating to me. I'd encourage your. listeners pay attention to where AI is best at too. We'll be continuing to pay attention both to your stories, but also just everything that's happening here because it might be happening under the surface, but I think it's extremely important. So Crystal, who startup and AI reporter at Reuters, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join the Everyday AI show. We really appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:29:34 Thanks again. All right, y'all. There is a lot there. If you miss anything, don't worry. We're going to be recapping it all in our newsletter. And if you did miss it before, we're going to go ahead and throw it in there again. So make sure if you haven't already, please go to your everyday AI.com. Sign up for the free daily newsletter.

Starting point is 00:29:49 If you're listed on the podcast, thank you. As always, please make sure to subscribe to the show. Leave us a rating. We'd appreciate that. We'd also appreciate if you come back and join us for more Everyday AI. Thanks, y'all. Meet Firefly AI Assistant. Now live in Adobe Firefly, the Allman One Creative AI Studio.

Starting point is 00:30:11 Just describe what you want to create in your own words and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome while the assistant accelerates execution. Stand control with the ability to step in and refine at any time. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us.

Starting point is 00:30:45 If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going. For a little more AI magic, visit Your EverydayAI.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.

Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 565: OpenAI’s Agentic Browser: Is this the future of content consumption?

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