Huh. the Arc browser is actually implementing small AI features that make things useful, like better title abbreviations in tabs, choosing a better name for that download file that’s just IMG_12378612.jpg, creating hovercard previews for links, etc.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/3/23898907/arc-max-ai-browser-mac-ios
Key quote:
“People don’t want more internet. They want less internet.” If Arc’s AI tools were going to be actually useful, they had to help people spend less time dealing with their browser because, ultimately, most people would happily trade a delightful discovery engine for a few minutes of their life back.
Unfortunately all the AI features (“Arc Max”) are offloaded to OpenAI, except one that’s offloaded to Anthropic.
Ideally, I’d want anything that’s acting entirely on the content of the page I’m looking at (like the tab titles and filenames) to be done locally. Even the link preview should only really need to grab and summarize the remote page.
I don’t think getting a slightly-better summary on pages that don’t provide their own in metadata is worth the overhead of calling out to a remote AI service.