Google is developing an AI assistant that can take over Chrome and complete tasks on your behalf, The Information reports, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Google's new AI assistant is, for now, called "Project Jarvis" after Iron Man's AI assistant in the Marvel comics and movies. Jarvis may be added to the Chrome web browser to automate web-based tasks like researching topics, buying items online, or booking travel.

Jarvis is powered by Google's Gemini AI and may work a bit like Microsoft's Recall AI feature that takes frequent screenshots of the user's screen and analyzes the images before taking action on a request. But Jarvis may have more functionality than Recall, as it may be able to complete a range of different tasks while Recall can only pull up past moments in a PC's history. In its present state, Jarvis is reportedly somewhat slow because it needs to process the data for a few seconds before taking action.

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It's unclear whether Jarvis will be available on mobile browsers—or whether Google will offer it outside of Chrome as an app. However, the AI assistant could be announced alongside a new Gemini model 2.0 as early as December. Google may limit the initial testing to a small group of users, though. 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has discussed the company's plans for autonomous AI assistants before at the I/O event in May. Dubbed "Agents" at the time, Pichai described the tools as "intelligent systems that show reasoning, planning, and memory, are able to think multiple steps ahead, work across software and systems, all to get something done on your behalf" under human supervision.

Last week, Amazon-backed Anthropic launched a similar feature for its Claude AI assistant called "computer use." The feature integrates with apps and controls your PC "the way people do—by looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text." But several AI and security experts have raised concerns about the feature, as it could be exploited for cybercrime or potentially impact user privacy.