AI browsers are transforming how we surf the web - combining automation, summarization, and personalization.
Hidden vulnerabilities, such as prompt injection and data leaks, reveal the darker side of digital efficiency.
As AI browsers become our online copilots, their intelligence can be both a shield and a sword. The race is on to design smarter, safer browsers before trust erodes entirely.
Browsers were once simple portals to the web. Now, they think. They summarise, automate, and sometimes even act. AI-powered browsers promise to make information retrieval effortless, freeing users from the grind of manual search and tab overload.
But as these browsers evolve from passive tools to autonomous agents, the line between assistance and intrusion begins to blur. Convenience, it seems, comes at a cost - and it’s often paid in privacy and security.
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Today’s AI browsers, such as those built by Opera, Perplexity, and Anthropic, integrate 'agentic' features that let the browser act on behalf of the user. Whether it’s filling out forms, summarising PDFs, or fetching data across multiple tabs, these tools redefine multitasking. However, each new function adds complexity - and risk.
Security researchers have been showing attacks based on prompt-injection in which malicious web content, with four hidden instructions, trick an AI into leaking information or otherwise▪ perform hazardous acts. Early in 2025, there were reports of AI browsers executing code as part of a web page (for example, Opera Neon implements such an agentic prototype), which raised concerns over unaccounted automation.
Similarly, cybersecurity experts from Malwarebytes and BrightDefense showcased 'CometJacking' exploits - deceptive URLs that manipulate AI agents to share session data from other tabs. In other words, attackers no longer need to hack software; they just need to hack the language the software understands.
Privacy, the other side of the blade, is equally sharp. A 2024 study from University College London revealed that several AI browser assistants collected sensitive user data - even during private browsing sessions - often transmitting it to third-party servers for 'model improvement.' When your browser is powered by an AI that remembers everything, incognito mode becomes a myth.
Then there’s the supply-chain risk. Browser extensions have long been exploited as gateways for malware - harvesting cookies, authentication tokens, and even cryptocurrency wallet keys. Now imagine an AI agent integrated into that extension.
A single malicious update can target thousands of users in an instant - BrightDefense's 2024 analysis of breaches studied how such targeting can lead to mass data breaches.
The rise of AI-enhanced browsers can exponentially increase the scale of this attack. It can complicate regulatory compliance (GDPR, CCPA) even at the highest level of the developer and organisation, which is termed 'Trust Level Intelligence.'
AI browsers are not bad; they are just powerful tools for which we have not yet set proper boundaries. To create a sense of balance between innovation and human responsibility, developers and organisations need to follow security-first principles:
Reduce agent scope: AI agents should be sandboxed and have restricted access. Agents should only have access to one tab or even a domain unless granted by explicit user consent.
Prompt provenance: Consider every instruction suspicious until provenance can be verified. Use injection detectors and signature-based filters to prevent misleading commands from being executed.
Local-first architecture: Only where there is no other choice, run AI models on-device or apply zero-knowledge encryption in such a way that some information about an AI model does not leave the user's system.
Extension hardening: Require cryptographic signing from AI-enabled extensions and audit them continuously. In the event of a mutable security incident, there is a rapid revocation channel to revoke the compromised builds ASAP.
User awareness: Expecting some users to determine whether something is a helpful automation or risky over-reaching will not be a foolproof approach. Encouraging complete policies that block automation driven by AI for sensitive data transactions in or out is a safer revolutionary practice.
Many of these ideas are being experimented with by organisations today as a foundation for developing responsible, ethical children's AI.
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Prompt Injection: Malicious text or HTML manipulating model output.
Cross-Tab Data Leakage: Agents sharing information between sessions.
Extension Hijack: Compromised AI plugins exfiltrating sensitive data.
Telemetry Exploitation: Misused logs revealing user behaviour.
Implement content-trust mechanisms (e.g., signed page prompts).
Enforce least-privilege execution for every AI action.
Adopt continuous security auditing of LLM inputs and outputs.
Mandate client-side anonymisation before telemetry transmission.
Does the AI agent have unsupervised cross-tab access?
Is every AI-generated action logged and reversible?
Are model prompts filtered for untrusted instructions?
Can users view and revoke all AI permissions in real time?
The AI browser is a double-edged sword: one side sharp with innovation, the other laced with unseen risk. Like all great tools, it reflects the hand that is wielded. As the web enters this new era of intelligent exploration, the onus is on both creators and consumers to build systems that think, yes, but believe safely. In the end, a smarter browser should browse for us - but even better, a smarter browser should protect us from ourselves.