Adapting to the AI browser age

Editor’s note: we are republishing a note that previously appeared in The Fix Media’s weekly newsletter. Subscribe to get everything you need to know about the European media market every Monday, along with special reports.

Last week OpenAI rolled out its GPT-5 model, which early observers say is generally smarter, faster and more reliable than earlier AI models. It’s a notable improvement for most ChatGPT users, especially those on the free tier – but not a paradigm shift in how we interact with AI.

AI will become far more useful for daily life and work once reliable systems are seamlessly embedded in the web browser. Right now, going to ChatGPT and (re-)teaching the chatbot all the context you need to do a task is a chore. An AI-powered browser that automatically remembers your personal context would be much more useful.

As M. G. Siegler put it, the new browser wars have begun. Ambitious upstarts like The Browser Company and Perplexity are trying to unseat the current leaders, while Google and Microsoft race to catch up. The fully AI-driven browser is still more promise than reality, but its rise feels inevitable.

How should news publishers prepare? Let us offer two speculations to start with:

1. Don’t sink too much time into bells and whistles like built-in article summarisation or “chat with this article” widgets. AI-powered browsers will make summarising content or querying a page ubiquitous – and probably do it faster, better, and more seamlessly than an individual publisher can.
2. But do offer your text stories in audio. As we noted earlier this year, “as AI-powered speech-to-text and text-to-speech technologies are becoming cheap and ubiquitous, the ability to get one story in multiple formats will be a basic expectation.” Future browsers will probably be able to read text stories out loud, but a customised solution from the publisher is more valuable – it lets you control the tone, pacing, and branding, and it brings added value for loyal readers, like subscribers or members, rather than just being a generic feature anyone’s browser can generate.

It’s an important topic that merits a longer discussion. We’d love to hear your thoughts and feature perspectives from news leaders – contact us at newsroom@thefix.media.

Source of the cover photo: Solen Feyissa via Unsplash