Perplexity is now offering its AI-native browser, Comet, to all users free of charge. The company announced that the browser, which was previously part of a $200 monthly subscription, will now have usage limits in its free version. Charles Rollet reports for Business Insider that the move is supposedly intended to combat the rise of low-quality content on the internet.
According to CEO Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity wants to build a “better internet” that is accessible to everyone. The Comet browser is designed to help users avoid so-called slop by summarizing webpages and extracting key information. The company positions the launch as a challenge to Google Chrome’s market dominance, which it describes as slow to integrate AI features.
In addition to the free version, Perplexity introduced a new subscription called Comet Plus. For $5 a month, users can access content from media partners including CNN, The Washington Post, and Fortune. Perplexity states that it will share 80 percent of the subscription revenue with these publishers.
The new partnerships come as other publishers, such as Dow Jones, are suing Perplexity for alleged copyright infringement. Srinivas countered that the new revenue-sharing model demonstrates the company’s commitment to fairly compensating its content partners. He described Comet as a personal AI assistant rather than just another browser meant to compete with Chrome.