[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] As leading AI companies speed up efforts to enter the web browser market, attention is focusing on whether they will bring meaningful changes to browser use and industry dynamics.

OpenAI and Perplexity last year each unveiled their own web browsers, ChatGPT Atlas and Comet. Microsoft has also deployed Copilot AI in its Edge browser, letting users ask a chatbot questions alongside the content they are viewing.

Some in the industry rate AI as the biggest change in the browser market in the past 20 years, but market share still shows little sign of major shifts.

According to Cloudflare, Google Chrome's share in the global market is above 63 percent. StatCounter data for December put Google's share at 71.23 percent, far ahead of Safari at 14.84 percent.

Google is also rapidly integrating its Gemini AI into Chrome, taking into account that AI is intensifying competition in the browser arena.

Google last May also introduced an AI mode in Google Search and the Chrome browser that offers a conversational experience similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Google's Gemini 3 model, unveiled late last year, is also being rated as surpassing OpenAI's GPT-5. Google recently also introduced a new experimental tool called Disco that lets users turn open tabs into customised interactive apps.

In a recent Financial Times report, Stephanie Liu, a principal analyst at market research firm Forrester, said, "A browser with AI features alone cannot be a differentiator." She added, "OpenAI will need to find a meaningful value proposition to attract more users. But this is a difficult task when it must go up against existing web browsers that are very powerful and widely used."

Many see AI as a keyword that can innovate a browser market that has seen little change over the past 20 years, but some also point out that the actual user experience still falls short of expectations.

Users complain that AI browser functions are prone to errors, and there are also concerns over privacy of personal information and cyber threats such as prompt injection, in which malicious prompts are inserted into websites to manipulate large language models, the FT reported.

Even so, the AI industry's push against Chrome in the browser market is likely to gain more momentum this year. That is because browsers are a strategic stronghold for AI companies in terms of strengthening user relationships, collecting data needed for model training and securing a platform for AI agents.

Many users currently access AI chatbots such as ChatGPT through browsers controlled by Google and Microsoft. In that context, expanding the user base for their own browsers could help AI companies secure valuable data needed to train large language models and could also be useful for selling advertising, the article said.

As the industry's race toward so-called AI agents that automatically handle specific tasks without human intervention intensifies, the weight carried by browsers appears to be growing further. Browsers are being seen as the platform on which AI agents run, the FT reported.

OpenAI plans to soon introduce features in ChatGPT Atlas that support multiple profiles and allow users to group tabs. Adam Fry, product lead for ChatGPT Atlas at OpenAI, said, "These features are the beginning of a long-term investment that we are making in Atlas." Jesse Dwyer, who is in charge of the Comet web browser at Perplexity, told the FT he thinks of the browser like the operating system of your mind.