- Perplexity's upcoming browser wants to track you in and outside the browser.
- The company's CEO Aravind Srinivas says it's to serve users hyper personalized ads.
- Perplexity's browser named Comet is all set to launch in May this year.
Data privacy is a sensitive topic. While many show concerns about big tech collecting telemetry to “improve their products,” there’s also a few that couldn’t care less. With the rise of AI, understanding the users and accessing their data has become a gold mine for data scraping and more common in recent years. Most tools require you to read their terms and conditions about data collection. So, Perplexity is taking an obscurely honest tracking approach with its upcoming browser.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas appeared on the TBPN podcast yesterday, where he said one of the reasons the firm is building its own browser is to rigorously track and collect everything a user does, even outside the app. The goal is to collect as much data as possible to then sell premium ads.
The justification that Srinivas gave is users use some prompts for work-related purposes which are not personal. Besides, Perplexity will track things like your visits to places, browsing time, websites, and everything else you do in and outside the browser. He also claims Perplexity users should be fine with tracking because the ads will be more relevant.
While these statements about data collection might seem a bit direct, it’s reminiscent of how the internet has always worked. Firms like Google and Meta track you across the internet with different aspects of search and location for targeted advertisements. The list includes Apple as well. It’s exactly why the US DOJ wants Google to sell off Chrome, due to monopoly in advertising.
The browser business gets you a lot of data and capital via better targeted ads. That’s exactly why OpenAI wants to buy Chrome. Perplexity is starting to partner with smartphone manufacturers to include a deeper integration with its AI assistant. The recent partnership being with Motorola and its Moto AI.
Rules around data scraping are still pretty gray, raising privacy and copyright infringement concerns. The recent Ghibli image incidents are a good example. It’s one of the reasons for the increasing distrust in big tech. That’s also because the current privacy rules don’t have a set of borders defining where these AI firms can go or tread. It begs a question. In a world where AI assistants follow us everywhere, how much privacy are we really prepared to give up for convenience?
Update — Perplexity CEO responds: Aravind Srinivas has responded, saying his words were taken out of context by TechCrunch. The data tracking across and outside the upcoming Perplexity browser was a response to a hypothetical question posed by the podcast hosts. This was where Aravind responded with the need of cracking memory and personalization if we need relevant ads.
Adding to that, he said that every user will be three options — no storing in the memory, memory without ads, and memory with ads. The latter he mentions is out of the question right now and for the foreseeable future. Instead, the firm will focus on the second scenario.
What are your thoughts on Perplexity wanting to track you across everything? Let us know in the comments.
