There isn’t much innovation in the web browser space these adys, so when the Arc Browser was launched for Apple users, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Now, the folks who made the Arc Browser have come up with a mobile search engine, though it’s not entirely connected to the desktop Arc browser.

The Browser Company has just announced Arc Search, a new search engine from the makers of the identically-named browser that wants to stand up to the likes of Google and Bing by doing a couple of things differently. Most notably, by putting generative AI at the very core of the search engine. AI on our search engines is nothing new—it’s kind of the whole point of Microsoft Copilot/Bing Chat, and it’s also being done by Google with Bard. After all, when you give generative AI access to search and websites, it becomes a surprisingly reliable tool for researching that’s also really easy to use. Arc Search takes this concept to the max, with a function called “Browse For Me” that will look up multiple websites and come up with an AI-generated “website” telling you all you need to know about your query, including embedding images and videos if at all applicable/helpful.

Other additions include the option to auto-archive unused tabs, block ads and trackers, and keep distractions at bay with a reader mode. Unfortunately, there’s no web version (yet) that you can try out, and instead, there’s only an iPhone app that you can download. It’s certainly cool, but the fact that the core search experience we’ve come to know over the years just isn’t present here can be weird to get accustomed to. There’s also lots of questions to ask. At its attempt at building the perfect search result, how does it handle third-party data, and how will it cite its sources? Will we also see the occasional GPT lie?

It’d be definitely interesting to try this out once it becomes a more mature product. For now, you can give it a spin on the Apple App Store. Unfortunately, it’s not the perfect companion for desktop Arc browsers yet, as it lacks data syncronization.