Beyond Search: Perplexity’s Ambitious Plan to Take Over Your Mac

Perplexity wants to turn your spare Mac into an always-on AI agent that can run tasks continuously and access apps and files.

The AI startup is presenting the Personal Computer agent as a more personalised version of the Perplexity chatbot. By running constantly and having access to a user’s entire setup, it should be able to complete more tasks without human intervention, potentially working as a 24/7 personal assistant.

This is similar to what the popular AI agent OpenClaw offers, although it is embedded into messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram rather than a desktop operating system. Perplexity Personal Computer will only be available on Mac for now, with the Mac mini being the preferred device to launch it.

Perplexity claims that its AI agent has more fail-safes and audit tools than other agents, allowing users to approve sensitive actions before they are performed.

This announcement follows one made a few weeks ago for the Perplexity Computer, a cluster of 19 specialised AI agents capable of performing complex tasks without human intervention. Personal Computer expands on this by allowing Perplexity to run continuously and broadening access to files.

Anyone interested in Perplexity’s Personal Computer will have to wait a while, as there is no launch date yet. There is, however, a waitlist for those wanting first access.

Perplexity trying to build out from its search engine…

This is yet another attempt by Perplexity to grow beyond being just an AI search engine. It launched the Comet web browser in August last year to gain more control over the browsing experience and offer more personalised AI services.

It has also focused on building out its shopping and commerce solutions through an agentic search tool designed to find the best deals online and an “instant buy” feature in partnership with PayPal.

…But it has hit several roadblocks

These attempts have hit several roadblocks, however, with its Comet browser being blocked by a federal judge from crawling Amazon’s website. The friction between Amazon and Perplexity stems from Amazon’s desire to control the shopping experience and to prevent chatbots from cutting out the middleman. The lawsuit was a surprise, given that Amazon is an investor in Perplexity.

Perplexity has also been sued by Reddit for unlawfully scraping its data. In this case, Perplexity once again appears to be in hot water because it tried to circumvent the copyright owner, rather than the scraping itself being the issue. Reddit allows AI crawlers to scrape the site, but they must apply and pay a licensing fee to do so.

While Perplexity has forcefully pleaded its innocence in both cases, it is clear that the company, like other AI developers, is operating in a “move fast and break things” mode.

Let’s hope that with the AI agent, it is more cautious, as the consequences of a rogue agent with full access to a user’s digital life could be devastating.

For more on Perplexity’s push into autonomous systems, check out our coverage of Perplexity Computer, a cluster of 19 AI agents designed to tackle complex tasks without human input.