Brave is Adding a Native AI Assistant to its Browser

Brave announced today that it has begun testing a new AI assistant called Leo that will be built into its flagship web browser. It’s available now in early pre-release nightly builds of Brave.

“Building on the success of the Brave Search AI Summarizer, we’ve made Leo available as a companion in the browser sidebar,” the firm explains in its announcement post. “Leo allows users to interact with the web pages they’re visiting—for example, by asking for video transcripts or interactive article summaries—without leaving the page itself. Leo can also suggest follow-up questions, augment original content, and even help with reading comprehension. Leo can answer questions just like other AI-powered chatbots, but directly within the experience of a web page.”

In other words, Leo sounds a lot like the AI functionality that other browser makers are adding to their own products, but of course Brave’s focus on privacy and security is what will set this apart. And according to the company, Leo uses Meta’s Llama 2 source-available large language model (LLM) “a special focus on safety.” That is, user inputs through Brave will always be submitted anonymously using a reverse-proxy to its inference infrastructure. “In this way,” the company says, “Brave can offer an AI experience with unparalleled privacy.”

Leo is free to use and does not require a user login or account. Chats with Leo will not be used for training purposes, and no one can review them as they’re discarded immediately after a reply and are not persisted on Brave’s servers. This also means that there’s no way for users to review past conversations, or any need to delete any data after the fact. The Brave browser will share your latest query with the server, your ongoing conversation history, and, when needed, only the necessary context from the page you’re actively viewing (like the article text, or a YouTube video transcript).

And for the time being, Leo does not have access to live information. This will change over time, as Brave plans to update Leo with “some level of access to current information” that is powered by the independent Brave Search engine.

To test Leo in Brave today, download a Brave nightly build, which will install alongside other versions of Brave and other web browsers.