
Is the era of paywalls over? Smart browsers circumvent them, and controlling them is very difficult
How can publishers protect themselves from AI-powered “smart” browsers if they look like ordinary users? The emergence of new AI-powered “smart” browsers is challenging traditional methods of protecting online content. OpenAI’s recently released Atlas browser, as well as Perplexity’s Comet and Microsoft Edge’s Copilot mode, are becoming tools that can do much more than display web pages : they perform multi-step tasks, such as gathering calendar information and generating news-based client briefings. Their capabilities are already posing serious challenges to publishers seeking to limit the use of artificial intelligence in their content. The problem is that these browsers are outwardly indistinguishable from


