Firefox head on AI browsers and what's next for the web (www.theguardian.com)

Big AI players are shifting from standalone chatbots to AI‑first browsers: last month OpenAI launched ChatGPT Atlas, Microsoft previewed Edge’s Copilot Mode, Perplexity made its Comet browser free, and Google rolled Gemini into Chrome. In response, Firefox GM Anthony Enzor‑DeMeo says Mozilla will cautiously add AI features but preserve user choice and privacy — offering a sidebar that can plug into multiple assistants (Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.) rather than defaulting to one provider. Firefox, with about 200 million users, stresses opt‑in personalization (private browsing and no login yield less personalized AI) and has a new Perplexity partnership while avoiding exclusive promotion of any single model. For the AI/ML community this matters because browsers are becoming rich sources of user context (page content, history, interactions) that can dramatically improve agentic assistants but also raise data, consent and monetization questions. Enzor‑DeMeo flags risks: increased subscription gating of content, shifting ad economics, and uneven paid adoption (paid AI ≈3% globally), meaning many companies will experiment with distribution, revenue models and regional strategies. Technically, multi‑backend side panels imply standardized integrations/APIs, new privacy‑preserving data flows, and a market where model choice, provenance (source citations) and consented context will shape which assistant architectures gain traction.