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- Perplexity is making its $200-a-month browser free for everyone.
- The move takes aim at the rise of low-quality internet ‘slop,’ CEO Aravind Srinivas says.
- For $5 a month, Perplexity is also giving Comet users access to outlets like CNN, WaPo, and Fortune.
As human and AI-generated “slop” floods the internet, Perplexity says it’s fighting back by making Comet — its AI-native browser that normally costs $200 a month — free for anyone in the world, forever.
“We want to build a better internet, and that needs to be accessible to everybody,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told Business Insider at a launch event in San Francisco on Wednesday.
The free version of Comet, which launches today, will come with rate limits, Srinivas made clear.
Comet can summarize webpages, pull key details, and wade through links on a user’s behalf. It first debuted in July but was only available through Perplexity’s pricey Max tier until now.
A shot across Chrome’s bow
Perplexity’s goal with Comet is to help people avoid low-quality content and focus on meaningful, high-quality sources for research.
“I think slop is fundamentally going to be easier to create now, and it’s going to be hard to distinguish if something is AI or human on the internet,” Srinivas said.
The move also takes aim, again, at Google Chrome’s dominance. The world’s most popular browser has been relatively slow to add AI features, and a Perplexity press release called out “long-promised AI browsers from legacy companies.”
Still, Chrome has a massive distribution advantage with more than 3 billion users while Comet has a waitlist in the “millions,” Srinivas said at the launch. Google also began rolling out some AI features in Chrome last month.
Perplexity wants to save journalism, too
Perplexity also announced new media partners for Comet Plus, a $5 monthly add-on that gives Comet users access to content from a bundle of outlets. Those include CNN, The Washington Post, Fortune, the Los Angeles Times, and Condé Nast — which owns The New Yorker, Wired, and others.
The launch comes as Perplexity faces legal battles with other major publishers. Dow Jones, the parent of The Wall Street Journal, as well as the New York Post, are suing the startup over allegations that its AI rips off their content.
Perplexity has strongly denied this in court, and Srinivas pointed to Comet Plus as proof that Perplexity wants to share revenue fairly with publishers. Perplexity says it gives them 80% of subscription proceeds.
“We have always been clear that a product like ours requires high-quality sources to exist on the web,” Srinivas told Business Insider.
‘Not disappointed’ Google kept Chrome
Last month, the U.S. government allowed Google to keep Chrome in its monopoly case.
Perplexity had made a surprise $34.5 billion bid to buy Chrome in case of a forced divestiture — a staggering sum that far exceeds the $20 billion valuation Perplexity has been raising funds at.
Srinivas said he’s “not disappointed” that Google kept Chrome. He considers Comet more of a personal AI assistant than a traditional browser, anyway.
“I think Comet is not just another browser meant to take market share away from Chrome,” he said.
“That’s kind of how Microsoft would approach things.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
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