Google is pushing the boundaries of what a web browser can be with a radical new experiment. Moving beyond the traditional model of static tabs and search results, the company's Chrome team has unveiled "Disco," a browser that uses artificial intelligence to understand your online activity and dynamically generate custom, interactive applications to help you complete tasks. This initiative, launched through Google Labs, represents a significant step towards a more proactive and personalized web experience, where the browser doesn't just display information but actively helps you synthesize and use it.
Project Name: Disco (short for "discovery") Core AI Feature: GenTabs Underlying AI Model: Gemini 3 Development Origin: Started as a hackathon project within Google's Chrome team. Current Status: Experimental launch in Google Labs. Availability: Limited early testing for a waitlist of users in the US on macOS. Requires a personal Google account. Key Concept: A "project" is a container within Disco that holds a chat conversation and a set of regular web tabs. A "GenTab" is an AI-generated, interactive web app created from the content of those tabs.
The Core Concept: From Browsing to Building
At the heart of the Disco experiment is a feature called "GenTabs," powered by Google's latest Gemini 3 AI model. The process begins when a user starts a "project" within Disco—a dedicated workspace that contains a chat interface and traditional web tabs. By describing a goal in natural language, such as "plan a trip to Japan" or "understand how ankles work," the user prompts the AI into action. Gemini then performs a dual function: it opens a series of relevant web tabs to gather information and, simultaneously, offers to generate a custom interactive application, or GenTab, tailored to the task.
Demonstrated Use Cases for GenTabs:
- Travel Planning: Creates an interactive app with maps, itinerary builders, and consolidated source links.
- Educational Tool: Generated an interactive model of a human foot to explain ankle mechanics.
- Project Management (e.g., a move): Produced an app with tips, a packing calculator, and a moving company price comparison table.
A Collaborative and Grounded AI Experience
What sets Disco apart from many AI-powered tools is its emphasis on collaboration with the open web. The generated applications are not created in a vacuum. They are dynamically built using the content from the tabs Gemini opens and, crucially, any additional sites the user chooses to visit. For instance, while planning a trip, if a user opens a new tab for a specific hotel or attraction, the GenTab's itinerary builder can incorporate that new data. This creates a "virtuous cycle," as described by Google's Manini Roy, where human research improves the AI's output, ensuring the results are grounded in real, current web sources rather than the model's pre-existing knowledge alone.
GenTabs in Action: From Travel Planners to Anatomy Models
Early demonstrations showcase the versatile potential of GenTabs. For travel planning, a GenTab might generate an app featuring an interactive map with pinned locations, a day-by-day itinerary builder, and a consolidated list of links to source material. In an educational context, a query about human anatomy resulted in a GenTab containing a simple, interactive 3D model of a foot to explain ankle mechanics. Another demo focused on organizing a cross-country move, producing an app with moving tips, a packing calculator, and a price comparison table for moving companies—all sourced from the user's open tabs.
The Uncertain Future of a New Web Primitive
Google executives are openly treating Disco as a true experiment, with many fundamental questions still unanswered. A key uncertainty is the nature of a GenTab itself: is it a transient tool that disappears when closed, or should it become a permanent, shareable web asset with its own URL? Parisa Tabriz, who leads the Chrome team, acknowledges that user feedback is pushing towards permanence and shareability, suggesting features akin to Google Docs or Sheets might be necessary. Furthermore, the team is pondering whether this technology is best as a standalone app, a feature within Chrome, or integrated into other Google Workspace products.
Availability and Strategic Implications
As of December 12, 2025, Disco is in a very limited experimental phase. It is currently available only to a small waitlist of users in the United States who are running macOS and using a personal Google account. There is no announced timeline for a wider release or versions for Windows or ChromeOS. The experiment's stated goal is to explore a new paradigm for human-computer interaction on the web. If successful, concepts from GenTabs could profoundly reshape core Google products like Chrome and Search, transforming them from tools for finding information into platforms for dynamically creating personalized tools to act on that information.