Various AI firms have launched so-called “AI browsers” and in particular what are called “agentic AI” browser features. And now Google has announced they’ve made massive AI upgrades to their Chrome browser which is by far the most used Web browser on this planet. And these Google Gemini AI features are becoming available to different classes of users paying or not paying over time, so you may not see some of them yet but you can feel pretty confident that eventually you will.

Frankly, I don’t recommend voluntarily using ANY current generative AI products from any firms. Google is indeed trying to push their Gemini AI into everything. But right now I want to warn in particular about what Google is calling Chrome “Auto Browse”. This is Google’s Gemini “agentic” AI system. And I’ll cut right to the chase at the start here, my very strong recommendation is, even more so than with other AI features, that you do not enable Auto Browse, do not use it, do not touch it. And I have the same advice for any other agentic AI systems from other firms.

What these systems do is in various ways take over your Web browsing. The AI literally masquerades as you, using your accounts and other credentials, and clicks its way around the Web to perform actions that normally you would do yourself. The concept is that in theory you could just tell the AI to find the best deal for something on the Web or book your vacation or clean up your duplicate photos or whatever, and the AI agent would run around and do all this for you.

I’m sure you already see why this has so many experts concerned, because we all know how AI systems spout misinformation and get confused, often can be manipulated in nefarious ways by hidden prompts on their inputs and so on. A three year old has more common sense than AI, because these AI systems have NO common sense. And we’ve already seen stories of people devastated when using these agentic AI systems when the AI deleted all their files or took other just awful actions.

Now, here’s the REALLY important part. It might be assumed that if these systems make terrible mistakes on your behalf using your accounts and credentials, that the AI firms would take responsibility. Well, think again. Google for example with their new Chrome Auto Browse pops a warning saying explicitly that actions taken by their AI on your behalf are YOUR responsibility. If the AI screws up, YOU get the shaft.

That’s the WHOLE ballgame as far as I’m concerned, and why I don’t recommend using agentic AI at all. These systems typically have settings that again in theory are supposed to let you control what sorts of actions they take, what files of yours they have access to and other parameters. Google’s for example at this point reportedly is supposed to stop just short of letting the AI click the final BUY NOW button creating a charge on your accounts. And of course they say you should monitor the AI’s actions.

This is all basically hogwash. Google must know that most people do not have the background or time to keep track of how these AIs are configured or what they’re actually doing, and if you have to monitor the AI to see if it’s messing up, much of the whole ostensible purpose is lost from the get go.

There’s a lot more technical detail of course. For example, your private browsing activities may be uploaded to Google as part of all this, triggering an array of additional privacy issues.

But as far as I’m concerned, this is a very straightforward decision. Even if Google for example were willing to accept responsibility for errors that Auto Browse makes that could potentially cause enormous problems for users — and AGAIN they’re refusing to accept that responsibility — I would not ever want these AI agents performing actions on my behalf — I won’t be using them.

If you’re willing to let these hallucinating Large Language AI models loose on your phone or desktop computer and let them go merrily clicking around the Web using your accounts and credentials, that’s your choice of course, but being a guinea pig for Big Tech AI isn’t anywhere on my personal bucket list.

–Lauren–