Anthropic has launched a new browser-based AI tool, Claude for Chrome, embedding artificial intelligence directly into how people use the web.
The company announced the research preview on Tuesday, saying that 1,000 subscribers on its Max plan, priced between $100 and $200 per month, will be the first to gain access. A waitlist is also open for others.
Through a Chrome extension, selected users can summon Claude in a sidebar window that stays in sync with their browsing activity. The agent can summarise pages, interact with content, and, when granted permission, even perform tasks inside the browser.
The browser is quickly becoming a focal point in the competition among AI developers. Perplexity recently released its own AI-powered browser, Comet, while Google has integrated Gemini into Chrome, and OpenAI is reportedly working on its own AI-driven browser.
These reveal browsing has gone beyond search to handing over routine actions to automated systems.
For Anthropic, the launch is also about safety. The company admitted that browser-based agents carry real risks, including prompt injection attacks, where hidden instructions in a web page could trick the AI into carrying out harmful commands.
Internal testing showed such attacks succeeded 23.6% of the time before mitigations. Anthropic now claims it has cut that rate to 11.2% by introducing several layers of defence.
Among them are site-level restrictions, default blocks on financial services, adult, and pirated content, and mandatory confirmations for sensitive actions such as publishing, payments, or sharing personal data. “Claude will always ask for explicit permission before taking high-risk actions,” Anthropic said in its blog post.
Google’s Chrome browser, which tops global market share, is at the centre of an antitrust case that could force the company to sell the product. If that happens, ownership of Chrome could reshape the competitive landscape.
Perplexity has already placed an unsolicited $34.5 billion bid for Chrome, while OpenAI’s Sam Altman has said his company would also be willing to buy it.
This isn’t Anthropic’s first attempt to give its models control over a user’s screen. Last year, the firm tested a desktop-based agent that could operate a PC, but the early version was criticised for being sluggish and inconsistent.
Since then, the “agentic AI” has advanced considerably, with systems like Comet and ChatGPT’s Agent showing more reliability in handling everyday digital tasks, even if they continue to struggle with more complex scenarios.
Analysts see Anthropic’s decision to limit Claude for Chrome to premium subscribers as a sign of where the industry is heading: towards new business models built around productivity tools, enterprise automation, and personalised web experiences.
Gartner has projected that the AI security market could reach $15 billion by 2027, driven largely by demand for safe, agentic systems.
