Web browsers, which were designed for linked documents, are becoming obsolete as AI models atomize and reconfigure information.
I recently read an article by technology writer Om Malik in which he described something I hadn’t realized: When using his Apple Vision Pro, the web browser feels entirely out of place on a device designed for immersive experiences.
I defend and love the web, but I can’t shake this uncomfortable truth: Safari, Chrome, and their brethren are survivors of sorts in the age of AI systems, and the passage of time will only make their gray hairs more pronounced.
From Lynx to Chrome, the browser has assumed an immutable premise for three decades: humans browsing documents. AI systems destroy this paradigm. They see not pages but pure data, which they recombine at will. URLs and back buttons are remnants of another era and will become increasingly so.
The change is already here. Chatbots synthesize immediate responses. Immersive devices demand interfaces that go beyond the page. As Josh Miller, CEO and co-founder of The Browser Company (the company behind Arc and now Dia), says, users need an operating system, not a document viewer. That’s where The Browser Company is now.
It wasn’t voice commands or screenless interfaces that revolutionized the web. AI models, which decompose information into remixable streams, are changing how users interact with data.
This change, which is already evident—for example, OpenAI wants to build its own browser, or hints that it wants to be the next Google—raises uncomfortable questions about control and power.
Traditional browsers democratized access through open standards. AI-based gateways threaten to take an empire by storm and concentrate that control in the hands of new digital oligarchs.
The future needs more than a better browser. It needs intelligence that understands both human context and the ocean of data, and it seems highly unlikely that anything else will happen. The question is whether the openness that made the web great can stay. And it doesn’t seem very easy for that to happen.
Image | Bastian Riccardi
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