To be clear, they ARE building an AI-forward browser and he is very plain about collecting a ton of user info. The way it’s presented in context is that they intend to plug it in to their assistant/agent thing and surface relevant stuff to you on searches (which is the potential ad opportunity the article quotes as if it was the sole goal). But yeah, the implication is that they are collecting data regardless, even if the user profile ends up being used to cater AI responses to you specifically, to train models or whatever.

Hearing the guy talk about it I get the impression that he envisions an Apple-like ecosystem where they’re constantly ingesting data and you’re paying them to have their AI services act as a personal assistant and handle purchases and booking for you directly and so on, on top of anwering queries.

I would rather clip my toenails with a rusty chainsaw, myself, but that seems to be the idea.