Atlas vs Comet: Begun the AI Browser Wars Have

OpenAI just launched its AI-powered browser, Atlas.

Not only does it have ChatGPT built in,

but it can also perform agentic workflows,

taking action on websites for you,

navigating to different pages.

Now I found several use cases for another AI browser,

Comet from Perplexity.

So I'm gonna put it head to head,

performing the same tasks in both Comet

and Atlas at the same time.

Which one performs better?

Where does one fall short?

And because of a few specific tasks,

there's a clear winner that I'll be using going forward.

So for every test, I'm running them side by side,

left, Perplexity Comet on the right.

Now these are both Chromium browsers.

So the engine is basically Chrome under the hood.

I will say I like Atlas' design overall.

Feels a little more clean

and closer to like a default Mac browser than Comet.

Now test number one, the last time I tried Comet,

it could actually find promo codes on different websites

and try them here in the browser until one works.

So I'm gonna ask both Atlas and Comet

to try promo codes until one works,

and it's gonna be able to actually use the website

and apply them on their own.

Now in OpenAI's Atlas, you do need to activate agent mode.

You can actually take action on the website.

Perplexity Comet just kind of does that built in.

You don't have to enable a specific agent mode.

We'll also test speed

to see which one actually finds the promo code first.

I'll give Atlas a split second headstart.

And now they're both running.

You'll see Comet has kind of that blue highlighter

on the webpage.

OpenAI's Atlas does this kind of sparkly dot effect,

but they're both gonna look for promo codes on the internet.

And better than actually searching

or Googling for promo codes,

or having to give your email to a weird website

to see if they work,

both of these AI browsers can just do it right here

on the website automatically.

Perplexity Comet already found one that worked.

Click apply.

And now I have a discount already.

OpenAI's Atlas, it told me a few promo codes it has found,

and it's trying multiple.

First one it tried didn't work.

So we'll see if it tries another.

And now it found the same promo code that Comet did.

I would say one to two minutes later, but it still worked.

All right, added the same item here on overstock.com.

I'm gonna use the same prompt I used on the last website

here on Overstock.

Gave Atlas a tiny headstart.

Now it's searching.

That discount code box is right here on the checkout page.

Atlas does show you a little bit of the.

Sources it's referencing trying to find those promo codes.

Perplexity does it a little more behind the scenes.

Sometimes it shows you sources,

but Comet may have just found one.

Let's see if it works.

That one didn't work.

And again, this is one of the benefits of using an AI browser

because it can see when a discount code is rejected

and then try another one.

All right, that one I have to give to Atlas.

It found a promo code that worked first.

It applied it.

Comet still going.

Now Atlas is still trying promo codes,

even though one already worked

and now it's gone to different ones that don't have a discount.

Not sure why I did that.

Oh, Comet found a promo code with a better discount.

I have $40 off.

And once Comet found one that works,

it's actually going to stop trying different promo codes.

Oh, and Atlas found the same one just a couple seconds later.

All right, next one of the big use cases for AI browsers

is if I need to find a clip from a video,

maybe I want to use it in one of my videos

and rather than searching across dozens of different videos

looking for the same moment,

I can just ask it like play a YouTube video

at the right time code

where Steve Jobs talks about the intersection

of liberal arts and technology.

I'm going to give both Comet and Atlas the same instruction

and I just want it to go to YouTube

and play from that timestamp.

I'm going to try the instant mode again in Atlas

and we'll see how it goes.

So Atlas brought me to a video first

from a random YouTube channel.

Not exactly at the time code yet.

So we'll see if Comet can do it.

Now Comet opened a different video,

but it is more direct to the point that I want it.

Oh, and Atlas did jump to the timestamp finally,

but I think Comet got there a little faster

and it's also a better quality video,

but let's try another one.

I'm going to ask both to play the exact time code

of when Neil Armstrong says one small step for man.

Let's see how it goes.

Comet got there first,

went to the exact place in the YouTube video.

Atlas did get to the video.

It didn't jump to the time code immediately.

I think it's still actually searching.

It seems to know when it happens,

but didn't go there,

but it's spending a lot of time verifying it.

So I think Comet wins that race.

All right, one last one,

asking for that moment in JFK's speech.

Again, Comet got there pretty fast.

If I play it, it's right there at that timestamp.

All right, Atlas finally got to the video,

still waiting on it going to the timestamp.

Test number three.

One of the use cases both OpenAI

and Perplexity have talked about

is navigating websites like Zillow or Airbnb

something with natural language

rather than you clicking around

and trying different filters.

Again, I wish I could just keep agent mode active

because that's a majority of what I want to do.

I'm going to ask both browsers

with the same request,

finding a three-bedroom house on the beach,

Treasure Island in Florida for this weekend.

You know, give Atlas a little head start.

Atlas couldn't find a result on Airbnb.

So it actually sent me over to VRBO

and it's now searching there.

Whereas it seems like Comet

is still finding results on Airbnb.

And Comet has landed on a single result,

Treasure Island, Florida.

It has four bedrooms, more than three,

still a good option ready for this weekend

and I can reserve it right now.

Atlas went out to VRBO

and then has now come back to Airbnb.

Now to Atlas's credit,

it did say that only the larger properties

with four to eight bedrooms are available,

not the exact three that I had requested.

So that's what it was looking for on VRBO.

I think because I specifically asked

for a house as well.

That's why Atlas was trying to look elsewhere,

but Comet did find an apartment

and things close by that are three bedrooms.

So you might get different results,

but both of them were able to use

the Airbnb website plenty fine.

VRBO, other booking sites. Next, one use case I use Comet for every day is when I publish paid

subscriber audio to Apple Podcasts, I have to refresh the page and wait for the publish button

to turn purple when I'm creating a new episode. Now I tried this multiple times with Atlas,

and the problem is it won't just refresh a page for a certain number of minutes. You'll see I'll

give the same prompt to both Atlas and Comet. And again, I use this every day and Comet has done

this for 10 minutes, sometimes even more, just refreshing the page, looking for the button and

and pressing Publish when it turns purple.

It has no problem sitting there doing that, even if I leave the office.

It'll just keep refreshing.

Apparently OpenAI's Atlas doesn't want to refresh the page on its own.

It will point me to other third-party extensions that will refresh the page for me,

but the problem is I needed to take action after one of those refreshes,

namely once that Publish button turns purple.

Seems kind of odd because even during that last test,

when it was going between Airbnb and VRBO,

it had no problem loading websites, sometimes multiple times,

so not sure why I can't just do a simple refresh.

Now yesterday when I tried this with Atlas,

It showed me the error message.

but now it's doing something different.

Maybe it works now. Let's see.

It looks like Atlas is doing some kind of script writing.

I'm not sure why the browser just can't do this built-in,

but I'm going to keep using Comet for this use case.

Next, in any browser like Comet or Atlas,

we're great at finding files on a website,

like maybe the IRS.

You need a W9 form.

Rather than click around or use the site search,

which could be difficult,

I'm just going to ask each browser to find the PDF

for a W9 form on irs.gov.

Now, Comet just gave me the direct link to the PDF file

rather than navigating to the page.

Atlas got there a little quicker.

I could have just clicked the link in Comet,

but let's see if it'll load it in the tab after I asked it.

And now Comet's doing the same process as Atlas,

actually searching for it

and then clicking to the specific page.

And both got there eventually.

A little more prompting

with the exact details of what you want,

probably would have done at the same time.

Now, I'm not going to go into agent mode in Atlas for this one,

but something I might need to do is find information

from a website like a DMV type website.

And again, rather than clicking around,

what forms or documentation do I need

for a driver's license test?

And both just gave me the information right here in the chat.

For what it's worth, Atlas gave me little emojis next to headings.

So that looks nicely formatted.

But again, one of the nice things of using a browser is it has context for

what website you're already looking at.

So I didn't have to give it a link, like in the ChatGPT app or

on the Perplexity website.

It just knows what I'm looking at.

Another task you can do using a Gentic mode is to analyze something

like metrics on a dashboard.

So here's our podcast metrics for primary technology.

That's my tech podcast.

Subscribe to the link below.

So I'm going to ask both browsers.

Give me the average total downloads for this podcast over the last three months.

Well, there's a graph on screen that.

I might tell them that information, I'm going to see what they do.

So comment already gave me an answer, 3681 as the average.

That was the average total downloads per episode over the last three months.

While Atlas gave me the average downloads in an entire month.

So a little over 20k.

So I'm gonna give it a follow up asking for the average episode downloads for July, August

and September.

Now unfortunately, comment said July, no episodes were detected.

It could have just clicked around and would have seen that we have numbers for July as

well.

But it did give me the averages for August and September.

And again, Atlas didn't click around long enough to...

...actually find the July numbers, but did give me August and September.

It's a little different. It was looking at just the day one downloads per episode...

...rather than the cumulative downloads.

So, the data that I actually wanted was given to me by Comet, not Atlas.

Next, a task I do often is curating lists of Amazon products for, like, accessory videos.

So, I'm gonna ask you for the top five USB mics on Amazon...

...to open each one in a new tab. Let's see what it does.

Now, because I didn't click Agent Mode in OpenAI's Atlas...

...it just basically gave me, like, a chat GPT response showing me the microphones.

Now, let's see if it'll actually open the tabs.

Atlas opened one, and then gave me the option to view all five tabs.

So, I can quickly command-click all five tabs that are listed here in Atlas...

...and now those tabs are open here in the browser window.

And here you'll see Comet actually opened the tabs to the specific microphones.

I didn't have to do that manually.

And a follow-up request, if I had a bunch of Amazon tabs open...

...I would like it to format it into a simple title and link list.

So, I'm gonna ask both browsers to format that list for me.

Comet did that pretty quick.

It's exactly in the format that I asked for.

You can see the microphone title in the URL underneath.

I can now copy this and put it in a note

or a YouTube video description.

Atlas is still working on it, but I did get that nicely formatted list here too.

Both are capable.

Next, let's see if we can search LinkedIn for us

and find contacts from a certain company.

Side note, while supposedly Atlas and Comet work with iCloud passwords,

the extension is not very good.

It doesn't actually paste for me automatically.

That really needs to be fixed.

I'm going to turn on Agent Mode once again here in Atlas.

I'm saying I want to interview someone, a formal Apple employee

that worked there for 10+ years but is no longer there.

but is no longer there, give me two possible

names and then start a message to the first person. Open Atlas is aiming big with Johnny Ive and Scott

Forstall, but let's see who it actually finds. Now the nice thing is both of these browsers,

it can keep working on that tab in the background and I can go do something else. So I'll do one

final test. Now if I have something written here in an email composing something, I can ask ChatGPT

about the text that I have selected. I can ask it to rewrite that email. I'll ask Comet to do the

same. Because I didn't select agent mode, it can't take action and Atlas can't actually put it in the

email compose window. So let's actually do that. Comet made a very lengthy

sounding email from my one sentence and automatically put it in that draft.

Now Atlas in agent mode is taking action on the site. While it's doing that,

let's check on what names it's actually found.

Comet found someone that worked at Apple for 10 years and already opened a

message compose window ready to send her a message already put in the subject

line, which is pretty nice. Didn't give me a second name,

but it's actually still looking as you can see here in the assistant window.

And now Atlas did put that email content here in the window. So again,

remember to activate that agent mode when you want it to take action.

And Atlas, when asking for those former Apple employees, gave me Johnny Iverson.

and Scott Forstall, but didn't start a message to either one of them, probably because it can't.

Better result from Perplexity Comet there.

So those are some real world use cases that I've been using AI browsers for.

And in the test for this video, it seems like Comet still has a bit of an edge.

It can refresh the page automatically,

take action without having to click Agent Mode every time.

And while I like the design of OpenAI's Atlas,

and I'll be keeping an eye on it to see what updates come,

I'll still be using Comet for any AI browser needs.

But let me know what questions you have down in the comments,

and get subscribed and hit that like button.

I'm going to keep testing these.

out. And if you want to learn more about my process, maybe with Chachapiti and other apps

that I use on my Mac, check out my video right up here. And YouTube thinks you'll really enjoy

this video. Thanks for watching. I'll catch you next time.