Remember Clippy? The overly enthusiastic paperclip that would interrupt your Word document to ask if you were writing a letter? At the time, it was ridiculed - we dismissed it as Microsoft's well-intentioned but somewhat misguided attempt at helpful computing.

Well, it seems Clippy's back. But he's evolved considerably.

Today's AIs no longer just ask if you're writing a letter. Now they'll have access to your calendar, can navigate your inbox more efficiently than you, and likely know what you need to do next well before you do. We're entering the age of AI browsers, and this could represent a fairly significant shift in how we approach UX and digital design moving forward.

What exactly is an AI browser?

AI browsers only came onto my radar recently through James Noble's excellent piece "The Agentic Web: Preparing for an AI-Native Internet." The concept is straightforward but profound in its implications.

Unlike traditional browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, these new AI browsers - such as Arc's Dia, Perplexity's Comet, and Opera Neon - aren't just windows to the web. They're intelligent copilots that understand context and intent. Forget typing search queries and clicking through results. Now you'll be issuing instructions:

"Find me three sustainable shoe brands under £150."

"Book me the cheapest direct flight to Brisbane next Thursday."

"Summarise this user interview and pull out the key insights."

The browser doesn't just show you results - it's an integrated web assistant that can do the legwork, make decisions, and get things done.

The two shifts that matter for designers

Working in e-commerce UX, my mind immediately went to what this means for designers like those in my team, who build digital experiences to be handled by this new crop of browsers.

I see two significant shifts happening simultaneously:

First, we'll be designing experiences that AI browsers will navigate and interpret. These browsers effectively represent another user type - one that reads, understands, summarises, and interacts with content on behalf of humans.

Second, we'll be working alongside AI browsers (and apps) in our design processes. As these agents embed within tools like Miro, Notion, and Figma, our creative environments will become collaborative spaces where we partner with intelligent, invisible teammates.

Designing for AI browsers (not just humans)

Most digital experiences today are optimised for human perception - beautiful interfaces, carefully crafted user flows, delightful micro-interactions. But AI browsers don't care about your gorgeous UI and fluid motion tweens. They parse your code, read your content, understand your intent, then traverse and translate your entire product into a concise summary or set of actions.

This means we need to start thinking differently about a few key areas:

We need to design for intent, not just navigation. AI agents don't browse around your site clicking links. They're laser-focused on helping someone achieve a specific goal. Make it dead simple for them to understand what your experience is supposed to accomplish.

Everything needs to be summarisable. What happens when your entire app, with all its nuanced features and carefully considered flows, gets compressed into a two-sentence summary by a language model? Will users still understand the value? Will they want to engage?

Structure becomes your secret weapon. Here's where years of accessibility work suddenly pays unexpected dividends. Those semantic HTML elements, proper heading hierarchies, and meaningful link text we've been championing? They're exactly what AI agents need to navigate and understand our interfaces. The same structured markup that helps screen readers also helps artificial intelligence parse intent and content. It turns out designing inclusively for humans accidentally prepared us perfectly for our AI future.

Designing with AI browsers as creative partners

AI browsers aren't just set to change how people consume our work - they'll transform how we create it too. Picture this: you're working in Miro, sketching out a service journey, when your AI assistant pipes up:

"I notice you're mapping pain points. Want me to pull insights from last week's user interviews and create a workshop-ready synthesis board?"

Or you're in Figma, applying a new design pattern, and your AI collaborator offers: "I can apply that spacing system across all twelve screens and handle the component variants too, if you'd like."

Our design tools are becoming genuinely collaborative. Not just faster or more efficient - but intelligent partners in the creative process. This shift changes everything about how we work:

Tools become teammates. You're not just using software anymore; you're co-creating with it. You set the direction, it builds. You provide feedback, it iterates. The boundary between designer and assistant becomes beautifully blurred.

Workflows turn into conversations. Instead of endless drag-copy-paste cycles, you're saying things like "Generate three variations of this onboarding flow using our established patterns" and watching it happen.

Our focus shifts from craft to strategy. Less time pushing pixels, more time defining intent, reviewing outcomes, and refining the bigger picture.

This isn't about replacing designers - it's about giving us superpowers. It's next-level Clippy.

What the agentic future means for UX

So where does this leave us? What should we be doing differently? Here's what I'm starting to think about:

Think in terms of 'intent', not just 'screens' and 'journeys'. Frame your experiences around what people are trying to achieve, not just the interface they'll interact with. The AI needs to understand the goal, not just the visual design.

Lean into information architecture fundamentals. The designers who understand semantic markup, logical content hierarchies, and clear labelling systems aren't playing catch-up - they're already ahead of the game. Web standards and accessibility practices create the foundation that AI agents rely on to interpret and navigate digital experiences.

Experiment with agent workflows. What would it look like if an AI navigated your product for a user? What if it helped generate your wireframes or facilitated your next design workshop? Start prototyping these scenarios.

Play with the tools that exist today. Try automation platforms like Make or n8n. Test drive AI browsers like Dia or Comet. The future's already here in scrappy beta form - get your hands dirty with it.

The vindication of fundamentals

Clippy failed because it was annoying - popping up to help at the wrong moments, in the wrong ways, with the wrong level of intelligence. But the intention was sound: a computerised assistant with the potential to be genuinely helpful.

Now, twenty-odd years later, we're witnessing Clippy's redemption arc. Today's AI assistants have the processing power, contextual awareness, and design sensibilities to actually deliver on that original promise of helpful computing.

What's particularly interesting to me as a UX designer is how this evolution validates principles we've held for years. The foundations for designing experiences for AI already exist in our everyday practices - every thoughtfully structured component, every descriptive alt attribute, every logical user flow was unknowingly building the necessary infrastructure. Our advocacy for accessibility and carefully crafted information architectures isn't just evidence of good, ethical work; it has set us up well to serve our new AI partner user types.

This convergence challenges the recent industry narrative around traditional UX skills becoming obsolete in favour of rapid product delivery and execution speed. I'd suggest the opposite is actually true. The designers who've spent years developing deep information architecture knowledge, understanding user mental models, mastering accessibility considerations, and learning semantic markup aren't being left behind - they're best positioned to succeed in this AI-collaborative future. While the focus for many seems to be on shipping faster, experienced practitioners have the skills and knowledge to best support the structural intelligence that AI agents will depend on.

The shift towards conversational interfaces and intent-driven design isn't separate from this trajectory - it's the natural extension of user-centred thinking. We're not learning entirely new skills; we're applying foundational UX principles to a broader definition of 'user' that now includes both humans and our AI partners.

The future of UX isn't about choosing between human and artificial intelligence - it's about designing experiences that serve both brilliantly. And if you've been quietly perfecting the fundamentals all along, you're already winning.