I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of Arc Browser, a Chromium-based browser by the Browser Company that has been making some waves lately in the influencer-sphere. While I like some features, I disliked others like the forced registration on start or the lack of customization options.
Some time ago, the makers of Arc announced that they started to work on yet another browser. This one less focused on experienced or professional browser users but on artificial intelligence.
Called Dia, it is currently only available with an invite. The Browser Company did publish a short video on YouTube that provides a quick tour of the browser though.
Here it is:
The main feature that the company highlights is the integrated AI. Search, for example, combines answers from the web using large language models and open browser tabs. While you can still search the web normally, you can also direct your questions to the baked in AI to get an answer generated.
This works similarly to how all other AI tools work today. You write something, the AI responds, and you may follow-up. The most interesting feature from my perspective is the ability to use the AI to interact with open tabs in the browser.
So, you could open up tabs during research that list different products. You could use the integrated AI to find out more about these exclusively.
There is also an “ask” button available on all webpages that you may activate to ask the AI questions about the current webpage.
The main question is whether this is enough to convince users to give it a try or even switch to it. My initial guess is that this is not sufficient for that. While Arc may convince some users to give it a try or even stick to Dia, it seems to lack the same features as Arc.
To be fair, Dia is still in active development and it may take a while before the browser is published publicly.
Now you: what is your opinion on baking AI into browsers? Good thing that is useful or rather something that you don’t want at all?
I basically and for the time being dislike AI baked into every possible digital tool you can imagine ; to be clear I disagree with AI being brought to the masses whilst I fully understand its incomparable contribution to science.
AI in my view triggers mental laziness and as such is a vector of the world-wide decrease of human intelligence we are already facing, a decrease which implies an increasing surface for manipulation and indoctrination, not to mention basic human relationships : more and more of us don’t even listen to, read others correctly, which creates soliloquies, monologues at worst, communitarianism at best, but always clashes, misunderstanding at one point : we no longer communicate with each others like we used to.
I think intellectual effort not only enforces our brains, our reasoning but also participates to the freedom of thoughts. I think AI brought to the masses, be it within a browser, brings truly nothing viable but rather a quest for easy answers which lead to idiocy.
I have been sticking with Mozilla based browsers. Mozilla offers an addon to their browsers and compatible called Orbit. It focuses on the main content of the current web page and offers a summary. It also allows questions about only the content of the web page. The concerns about privacy are addressed in the addon: “`Privacy Note: Orbit doesn’t require account creation and we don’t use your data to train any models.“`
I should have pointed out that the reason I like this is that the titles of some web sites are often misleading. Clicking the Orbit button and requesting a summary give a quick overview of that content so I can decide if I want to read the details. This has saved me considerable time on TLDR sites.
Both Arc and Dia are very strange names for a browser..What are they eluding to? Ark is mostly associated with Ark-of-the-Covenant or Noah’s-Ark | I’m sure the devil is in the details of what these folks are actually trying to create.
And Dia? Like in Diablo?…I certainly don’t want any ‘AI-D’emons in my machine.
Y’all have a Wonderful Way