Josh Miller laughs<\/span> a few minutes into our conversation and admits that he almost declined today\u2019s interview about The Browser Company<\/a>. The young CEO is jetlagged from a flight to Paris but appears comfortable over Zoom and eager to talk about Arc<\/a>, his company’s new AI-fortified web browser. So, what\u2019s the reason for his hesitancy? \u201cWe weren’t sure if we wanted more people to use it,\u201d says Miller. \u201cIt\u2019s legitimately a problem how [many] people are interested.\u201d In other words, the Arc browser is too popular\u2014a pretty enviable problem for a software entrepreneur.<\/p>\n On the cover of our 1997 March issue<\/a>, WIRED editors declared, \u201cThe Web browser itself is about to croak.\u201d Whoops! A quarter century later, not only are browsers still here, ribbiting along, but developers continue to update the user experience. The latest upgrade? Generative AI, of course.<\/p>\n Microsoft released a nascent version of its Edge browser<\/a> that uses OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT<\/a> model at the start 2023. By the time Google launched sign-ups for the Search Generative Experience<\/a> in May, multiple smaller companies and startups were poised to launch AI tools for browsers as well.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re building a whole super-agent natively integrated into your browser with a team of six,\u201d says Mahyad Ghassemibouyaghchi, founder and CEO of SigmaOS<\/a>. His startup browser launched a tool, called Airis<\/a>, just a week after Google announced its SGE experiment. Opera, a small but long-running browser company from Norway, dropped its AI-imbued browser<\/a> in late June.<\/p>\n Miller, who previously worked as a product manager at Facebook and the White House under Obama, led Arc to its 1.0 launch around the same time, sans chatbot tools. The software was a hit, with positive reviews<\/a> and influential users like Marques Brownlee<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’ve been pretty big AI skeptics ourselves,\u201d says Miller. \u201cVery wary of the hype.\u201d Despite the apprehension, by fall The Browser Company debuted Arc Max, with generative AI. Reaction from users was intense. On launch day, the new AI tool surpassed Browser\u2019s data limit and the company was forced to reach out<\/a> to OpenAI and Anthropic to ask for more.<\/p>\n Summarize the Web<\/p>\n That brings us to a critical question: What can these AI tools actually do in browsers? Well, in its first week, Arc Max users created over a million summaries<\/a> using generative AI to see previews of hyperlinked information as they\u2019re searching the internet, before clicking on the web page. For example, I searched for \u201cnamedrop apple\u201d in Google and hovered the cursor over my article about this new iOS 17 feature<\/a>. Here\u2019s the web page summary created by AI:<\/p>\n![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/656dc720ae25a2c60fe9df44\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/namedrop_ai_preview.png\")