Perplexity CEO Envisions AI Browser Taking Over Two Crucial White-Collar Roles

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas thinks the future of AI isn't in chatbots but in your browser. And he said it's coming for two roles that every modern workplace depends on: recruiters and administrative assistants.

AI-powered Tasks

Perplexity CEO said AI browser Comet will automate key white-collar roles like recruiting. The tool links to Gmail and LinkedIn to automate sourcing, outreach, and calendar tasks, he said. As AI reshapes offices, Srinivas said workers who adapt fast will be the most employable.

On Thursday's episode of The Verge's "Decoder" podcast, Srinivas explained how his company's new AI-native browser, Comet, is designed not just to help people browse the web, but to fully automate knowledge work.

"A recruiter's work worth one week is just one prompt: sourcing and reaching outs," he said.

He described how Comet's built-in AI agent can access apps like Gmail, LinkedIn, and Google Calendar to generate candidate lists, pull contact information, and send personalized outreach emails — tasks typically handled by recruiting coordinators and sourcers.

Future Changes

Srinivas believes Comet can take over many of an executive assistant's day-to-day duties, including email triage, calendar management, and meeting prep.

"You want it to keep following up, keep a track of their responses," he said.

"If some people respond, go and update the Google Sheets, mark the status as responded or in progress, and follow up with those candidates, sync with my Google calendar, and then resolve conflicts and schedule a chat, and then push me a brief ahead of the meeting."

Eventually, Srinivas believes Comet will evolve into an AI operating system for white-collar workers — one that continuously runs tasks in the background and executes commands from natural language prompts.

While Comet is still invite-only and available to premium users, Srinivas bets that people will pay for AI that does meaningful work.