is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. The AI browser wars are heating up. Google has Gemini in Chrome, Perplexity is building its Comet AI browser, and The Browser Company just got acquired by Atlassian for $610 million. Now, Microsoft wants to be part of the AI browser conversation. I sat down with Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman today to talk about the future of Edge, and why Microsoft is betting on its experimental Copilot Mode that controls your tabs and makes restaurant bookings. Suleyman says Microsoft’s path is to evolve the browser and AI tools it has today — turning Edge into something AI can control directly. “I think the browser is just going to evolve to become a true agentic browser,” says Suleyman in an interview with Notepad. “Your AI will be able to use all of the same tools that you use in the browser.” That means Copilot opening new tabs, navigating to them, and reading the content of multiple tabs at the same time — all while you sit there and watch it complete tasks for you. “It’s almost like having a little angel on your shoulder doing the boring hard work of reading reviews, doing price comparisons, synthesizing research, but instead of it happening away from you, you can actually see it in real time unfolding before your eyes,” says Suleyman. Microsoft isn’t planning to create an overhauled AI web browser like The Browser Company has tried to do with Dia. “There isn’t going to be a new browser; this is just going to be one experience,” says Suleyman. “I think it’s quite a distinct and very powerful experience, to bring Copilot to where you’re already at rather than having to create a new browser.” Weaving Copilot more closely into Edge, instead of totally overhauling the browser, seems like a logical move for Microsoft given its Windows user base and the fact Edge is still far behind Chrome in adoption. It may also allow Microsoft to better compete with OpenAI’s rumored AI web browser, all while providing some transparency around what AI agents are actually doing. “Copilot is going to go off and aggregate tabs, spawn new instances, click on the buttons, do the research, and you can kind of watch the game unfold and intervene occasionally when you want to,” says Suleyman. “You’ll always be in control, and I think the transparency creates trust.” This method of having Copilot visit websites for you, while you watch, also means that publishers still get visits from a regular browser. “It’s all born out of trying to create a more trusted AI companion, and also recognizing that there’s a lot of information on the open web and at source with publishers that’s very useful and important and will continue,” says Suleyman. “So maybe you’re not going to do the browsing as much, but your AI is going to do it for you and take traffic to those websites.” This all sounds similar to what Perplexity is trying to do with Comet, or Google’s ambitions for Gemini in its Chrome browser. Suleyman thinks Microsoft is ahead of the competition, though. “We’ve been very deliberate and careful, and that’s going to pay dividends because we have a whole set of features that no one else on the market has today,” says Suleyman. “I think we’re actually way ahead.” Copilot can navigate to tabs, scroll down pages, and highlight content on websites. “No one has that at the moment, and I think that’s a quite special feature,” says Suleyman. While this all sounds futuristic and “magical” (as Suleyman puts it) if it actually works well, Microsoft won’t make this AI mode mandatory. There will always be an option to turn these AI features off for those who simply don’t want them. “We’re going to definitely keep evolving the browser as it is,” says Suleyman. “It’s still a huge experience that many millions of people use and love, and we love it too and we’ll keep developing it.” Over the next few weeks, Microsoft is going to share more of the work it’s doing to bring more AI features to Edge. At a recent town hall, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed there would be a “consumer moment” in the fall, so I’m expecting a lot more Copilot news in the coming weeks. The bigger question is whether the browser will even continue to exist if AI agents get intelligent and reliable enough to do browsing on your behalf every day. “Your AI companion will use all the tools that you used to use — operating systems, apps, browsers, search engines — but you will mostly use your AI companion because it’s going to be able to do everything you can do in a browser and on your PC,” says Suleyman. “In a few years’ time it will be doing all the work for you, and you’ll be passively overseeing it, steering it, giving feedback. I think it’s going to be a magical experience and a lot of people will choose to move to that.” The pad Just a heads up that I’ll be out for a couple of weeks in October, so issues will be a little lighter next month. I’m still always keen to hear from readers, so please drop a comment here, or you can reach me at [email protected] if you want to discuss anything else. If you’ve heard about any of Microsoft’s secret projects, you can reach me via email at [email protected] or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I’m tomwarren.01. I’m also tomwarren on Telegram, if you’d prefer to chat there. Thanks for subscribing to Notepad.