Reimagining Surfing: Microsoft Edge and Artificial Intelligence Explained

0:00Microsoft Edge has just launched an AI browser embedded into it. This is really interesting. So today on the podcast, I want to be breaking down how useful this new quote-unquote AI agent built into Microsoft Edge is. Is this a copy of other AI browsers that we've seen, like the one like Comet from Perplexity? Is this new? Basically, what is it able to do? Microsoft gave me a heads up on the story like a week ago. So I've been waiting for their launch to be able to kind of talk about this. And I do think that there are some really interesting use cases that I'm not seeing from a lot of other people.

0:29And then there's also some things that I think they have room to improve on. So I'll be getting into all of that today. But before I do, I wanted to mention, if you want to try any of the AI models that I talk about on this platform, on my podcast, I'd love for you to go check out AIbox.ai. It's currently in beta, but it is my AI playground platform and a lot of exciting things coming in the future. But basically right now you can access the top 40 AI models all in one place and chat with them all in one thread. So if you're working on a document for work and you use ChatGPT to help you come up with some sort of data analysis, and then you're like, you know what?

1:01But the tone on this document sounds a little too robotic. So you can go switch to Claude and say, hey, you know, reformat this to have a better tone because I find Claude is so much better at tone. And maybe you need to do some more in-depth analysis or you need to go look at some real world tweets and you can use something like Grok. There's all sorts of different tools that have different strengths and weaknesses. So go check out the platform and see, you know, what is currently available over there because we're adding new models all the time on AIbox.ai. But it's 20 bucks a month. You get access to image, audio, and text models, and you can try them all on one platform without having access to subscriptions to everything.

1:36So go check it out. There's a link in the description. All right, let's get into what's going on with Microsoft Edge. Basically, the thing that I think is really interesting here is, okay, well, first of all, I got to say, I apologize because when they give their examples of what you can use this for, they of course use the infamous how it can help you book flights and how it can help you find recipes. These are my two least favorite examples of all time because every single ai company whenever they come with a new demo use these and i think that they're just like so uh brutally regurgitated feeling but in any case i'll talk about some actually very useful use cases that i think this is able to do but i might use some of their examples to illustrate some functionality basically inside of um inside of their edge browser they have a co-pilot mode which is an ai that you can talk to and ask it questions and can help you do things now we know that chat gpt and open ai right now are working on their own browser.

2:27They've just added agents into chat GPT. In addition to kind of having their operator and Google's working on some things in this regard. We have perplexity that just launched, quote unquote, the first AI browser, which is actually pretty cool, kind of agentic and can accomplish tasks for you. So it feels like this is the way the industry, Microsoft definitely doesn't want to get left behind when you have companies like perplexity coming out with like a brand new browser that never existed to have this, you know, the browsers that are already on a lot of people's computers are probably wanting to get a jumpstart on having these features that don't get replaced faster okay microsoft says that basically copilot mode is um still considered an experimental feature right so if everybody hates that they could say okay we're getting rid of it i don't think that'll happen but i think they're basically basically what's happening in my opinion is um we have perplexity that came out with a pretty decent tool and open ai that's working on tool microsoft doesn't want everyone to front run them all of these little startups to to basically come the tool faster than Microsoft, the big epic company could.

3:26And so they're like, they're, they're basically acting like a startup by releasing a tool that's quote, unquote, an experimental tool. It doesn't work perfectly. You can try it now. But they want to seem cool and hip and like, look, we're making innovative stuff, not just copying everybody in six months when they feel like the browser is a little bit better. It's also opt in by default, which I know some people will hate. Actually, personally, I hate that I hate it when when tech companies make anything opt-in by default it's like you can have a little pop-up that says would you like to use this and you say click yes but i i do not like it when all of a sudden your your browser is recording everything you're doing or looking at everything you're doing because they did an update and you never opted out of it oh my gosh so annoying but in any case i do think there's some interesting um interesting things of course pc or mac users can get access to this it's free currently they may add some sort of payment in the future but currently it's free um so there's a few main parts of this.

4:19Once you enable it, edge users are going to be, are basically going to have a tab page where they can search, chat, and navigate the web with Copilot's assistance. When you visit a specific web page, you can turn, you can go to Copilot and ask for more help. So their example is like if you go to a cooking recipe and, you know, the top of every recipe, there's like the person's life story and you gotta scroll all the way to the bottom of the page because they're trying to do Google SEO. And that's where you actually find the recipe. Well, if you click on a recipe page, you can go to the copilot and say, just tell me what the recipe is and it will just give it to you right there.

4:52How much faster that is than scrolling to the bottom of the page? I'm not sure. Personally, I have the Logitech, not sponsored, but I have the Logitech MX Master 3 mouse, which is amazing. And it has a metal scroll wheel with a bearing in it that I can flick and get to the bottom of any webpage in about one second. So is it gonna be any faster? And the reason I bring this up is because this is literally one of their examples. But so is it going to be any faster for me to go and ask it what the actual recipe is? I don't know. But maybe, maybe if it's not at the bottom of the web page and it's like in the middle somewhere and they have stuff at the bottom, maybe if it's hard to find on the website, you could get it to do it faster.

5:32I don't know. That one, I'm not sure if it's a good use case. And I will come up with some good use cases, by the way. But that one, I'm not giving them a full pass for that one. Another thing that they said is that it can handle a bunch of different tasks on behalf it can book appointments it can create shopping lists it can draft content again everything can draft content just come up with unique use cases microsoft i beg you they're saying that this is a quote-unquote agentic use of the web it's a big jump we have a lot of different ai browsers right now um so it's gonna be interesting one thing that i do think is like genuinely valuable is that they have allowed a voice input mode which typically if i'm like on a desktop for example i I don't use the voice input or think about using it a lot, but if it's a prominent thing, I think it could be very useful half the time.

6:14Like if I'm trying to do something and I need like voice, I'll just pull up my phone. I'm using the exact same app that I'm like on my desktop, but I just grab it on my phone and I'm like voice to texting, talking to it. But you probably could just do it on the desktop now. So I do think that that's good to be able to kind of go back and forth from your phone to your computer, not have so much friction between the two. This is going to be pretty interesting if you don't have a lot of mobility. so that's interesting Microsoft says that users are going to be able to give co-pilot additional context needed for a lot of tasks like your login credentials or your web history to manage more advanced stuff like booking but right now it's a little bit more manual right so you'd be like just find me the best flight and it'd like pull it up and it's like here's the best flight and you'd be like okay now like book it and it would like go there and be like okay now enter in your like you know your login credentials or your credit card or like whatever So it's like back and forth, which at that point, like sometimes I wonder if it's just faster to do it yourself.

7:10I would I love agents and I love the concept of agents. They can do everything for you. I don't love them as much if it's like back and forth because I've just Chad GPT's operator drives me crazy if I tell it to do something. And then it's like asking me like, OK, I did the first step. Do you want me to continue? And I'm like, yes, I want you to continue. Do the whole task. I'm not sitting here. I don't want to be here babysitting you. uh so in any case um i think if it falls into that trap it's less useful and right now it feels like it's more in that trap so um what is interesting and this is the good use case of copilot i'm done tearing them up and saying it's useless this is a good use case and i think this is interesting some people might think it's creepy but i do think it's interesting basically um you can use it as a research companion which we've heard from a lot of tools but you can actually tell it to look at all of the tabs that you have open on your browser.

7:58Okay, finally, a browser specific, useful AI use case that no one else is doing. So if I'm doing research, and I go, I'm like, let's say I'm trying to buy like a new barbecue or something, I go on Amazon, I open up like seven different tabs of like different top barbecue brands. And I'm like switching between them to see what the dimensions of everything are to see what the cost of everything is. I think it'd be amazing if you could just tell it like, hey, go do the research, look at all of my tabs, make a spreadsheet, you know, compare everything side by side, sort everything by whatever barbecue is like the cheapest, but also the biggest, like you can do a whole bunch of really cool things like that, where it's looking at all your tabs, you put you go find all the data, or maybe you tell it to go research it, and open a bunch of tabs, but it's like looking at all your tabs.

8:37I think that's a very useful thing that's gonna be really interesting. In the future, it's going to prompt people to pick up where they left off on a project. So if you're doing a bunch of research, say looking at barbecues, then you leave your computer gets shut down, you fire it back up. It's like, hey, you want to continue on your barbecue project research. And you could be like, nah, I forget it. I don't want to do my barbecue anymore. Is that annoying or is it useful? I don't know. Some people find it both ways, but it will also recommend next steps to take on those kinds of projects. So I think this is interesting right now.

9:06Microsoft obviously is stressing that it's only going to be able to access your browsing content when you choose to allow it. It's going to be very transparent to the end user with some visual cues. They said the idea that you can now toggle on or off a feature that's available to view and listen to while you search is going to be totally up to you. Some people won't like it. Some people will. I think that there's a lot of value and especially in the ability to look at a whole bunch of different tabs. So you have a project where you're looking at a whole bunch of different tabs. You're planning your wedding or something and you have tabs on all the different things that you're planning on doing and you get it to like consolidate or make a report.

9:42I think that's very interesting and useful. So I'll be excited to try that out when it launches. Hey, if you learned anything new about the new Microsoft Edge browser or if this podcast was interesting, make sure to leave us a rating and review. You can watch the videos if you're listening only on Apple. You can watch all the videos on Spotify or YouTube. There's a link to the YouTube video for this in the description as always. Thank you so much for tuning in. Make sure to go check out AIbox.ai if you want to try all the top AI models on one platform. And I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day.