Chennai: The chief executive officer of AI start-up Perplexity, Aravind Srinivas, has said that the company's upcoming AI-powered browser, Comet, has the potential to fully automate two white-collar roles — recruiters and administrative assistants — using only natural-language prompts.

Speaking on The Verge's Decoder podcast, Srinivas said Comet's in-built AI agent, currently available to premium users in invite-only beta, can plug into everyday workplace applications such as Gmail, LinkedIn and Google Calendar to help businesses automate repetitive knowledge-work tasks.

“A recruiter's work worth one week is just one prompt — sourcing and reach-outs,” Srinivas claimed, adding the tool could generate candidate lists, extract contact details and send personalised e-mails, which are usually handled by recruiting coordinators.

Demonstrating its capabilities, he said the browser could search for Stanford-educated engineers who had worked at AI firms like Anthropic, collate the information into Google Sheets and send tailored cold-outreach messages.

Srinivas added Comet could eventually serve as a multipurpose executive assistant by managing inboxes, coordinating meetings, tracking follow-ups and resolving calendar conflicts.

The long-term goal, he said, is to turn Comet into a full-fledged “AI operating system” that carries out background tasks triggered through simple prompts. Professionals would be willing to pay as much as USD 2,000 per prompt if it yielded substantial business value, he claimed.

His remarks come amid an industry-wide debate on AI's impact on employment. While Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts up to 50 per cent of entry-level jobs could disappear within five years, others like Salesforce's Marc Benioff argue the technology will augment — and not replace — human workers.