Employees are increasingly using personal AI tools, AI-powered extensions, and emerging agentic browsers to accelerate their work. But unlike sanctioned AI platforms, these tools operate inside the browser runtime, where neither CASBs, SWGs, EDRs, nor DLP solutions have visibility. This has quietly turned the browser into an unmanaged AI execution environment, giving way to a new threat known as shadow AI. Shadow AI isn’t just the latest buzzword; it’s a serious risk that leaves organizations vulnerable to data loss, cyberattacks, compliance violations, and more.
What is Shadow AI?
Shadow AI refers to GenAI-powered tools, browser extensions, and browsers that workers use on their own, without any company vetting or guidance. Different from shadow IT, where unsanctioned apps or devices slip through the cracks, shadow AI lives directly in the browser.
For example, employees might use their personal Claude accounts to work with sensitive company data or work on important product code all without IT’s permission or even knowledge.
Shadow AI is a growing risk as GenAI platforms and agentic browsers make way for productivity gains. Employees are now eager to take advantage of their benefits to help improve workflow. And in many cases, users are completely unaware of the risks that these AI tools can pose to the organization.
Why the Browser is Ground Zero
The browser is the window into today’s enterprise. With access to SaaS apps and all kinds of sensitive data stored in the cloud, browsers are the last line of defense for any organization. When AI is brought into the browser environment, it serves as a double-edged sword. The same tools and LLMs that improve workflows and boost productivity also have deep access to vast amounts of data. When users interact with these powerful AIs outside managed environments, controls vanish.
Below are the six shadow AI risks that modern enterprises must be aware of.
1. AI Agents Inside the Browser: A New Blind Spot
AI agents embedded directly into the browser, whether through agentic browsers like ChatGPT Atlas or AI-powered extensions, run with the same privileges as the user. They can read sensitive content across tabs, interpret instructions, summarize dashboards, and take actions inside multiple SaaS applications.
Unlike traditional scripts or web automation, AI agents operate on intent, not code. A single instruction or even a hidden prompt on a webpage can trigger multi-step actions across different applications. And because these actions are “user-authorized,” they bypass every traditional security boundary. Once active, an AI agent inside the browser effectively becomes a new unmanaged endpoint.
2. AI Extensions: The Highest-Privilege Shadow AI
Browser extensions were already a major risk vector. AI has now made them exponentially worse. AI-powered extensions routinely request elevated permissions such as read/modify all data on visited sites, inspect clipboard contents, extract text from any DOM element, and autofill or edit input fields across applications.
A compromised or malicious AI extension can exfiltrate corporate data, automate unauthorized actions, or leak sensitive workflows… invisibly. And because this activity occurs inside the browser runtime, legacy security tools cannot observe or block it. This category is not just Shadow IT. It’s Shadow AI with full cross-domain access.
3. Indirect Prompt Injection: The AI Reads the Attack
One of the most dangerous risks in modern browser AI comes from indirect prompt injection. This refers to the user doing absolutely nothing wrong, but the browser’s AI assistant reads hidden malicious instructions embedded in a page. Attackers are now hiding prompts in:
- Website comments
- HTML attributes
- Hidden divs
- CSS content fields
- Email bodies
- Documents loaded in web apps
When the AI assistant processes the page, it “obeys” these hidden instructions. That might mean summarizing sensitive data to a remote server, rewriting an internal document, or navigating the browser into a malicious OAuth flow.
The key takeaway here: The attacker doesn’t need to hack the browser. They just need the AI to read something.
4. Identity & Session Exposure Through AI Assistants
AI agents inside browsers often process sensitive elements that users never realize are exposed. These elements include session cookies, authentication tokens, internal URLs, proprietary data inside web apps, and more. When an AI assistant summarizes a dashboard, analyzes an application, or reads a user’s screen, it may inadvertently process and transmit these identity artifacts.
A single exposed token or bearer credential can give an attacker persistent access, and AI tools in the browser can leak these without detection. This is not theoretical. It happens every day in unmanaged browser environments.
5. Shadow AI on BYOD: The Perfect Storm
Shadow AI risk is amplified on personal and unmanaged devices. When employees access corporate apps from their personal accounts with Gogoel Chrome, Claude, ChatGPT Atlas, and others, enterprise controls have zero visibility into:
- What the AI reads
- Where the data goes
- Which instructions agents follow
- What data is copied into AI prompts
- What extensions extract from corporate apps
In a BYOD context, AI becomes a completely invisible data egress channel.
6. AI Supply Chain Risk: A New Attack Surface
Most AI extensions, agent frameworks, and plugins update automatically. This creates supply-chain risks unlike anything enterprises have seen in the browser:
- A poisoned extension update instantly compromises all users.
- AI model updates can introduce insecure capabilities.
- Third-party AI plugins can load unverified scripts.
- Agent frameworks can fetch remote instructions on startup.
There is no SOC visibility in these updates. No version control. No patch governance. AI supply chain manipulation inside the browser is a rapidly emerging threat that attackers are beginning to target.
Cross-Domain Authority: The Core Problem
Traditional browser security is built on strict domain isolation. Each website is sandboxed from another. AI breaks that model.
When an AI assistant runs in the browser, it can read data from one application and take action in another. All appear to originate from the user, so no browser policy is violated. No exploit is needed, and no boundary is crossed because the AI agent is the user.
This collapses decades of security assumptions about how the web isolates data. It is the heart of the Shadow AI problem.
Security Blind Spots and Risks
There are four crucial blind spots and risks that come with shadow AI that all security leaders must be aware of:
- Data Exposure: Sensitive files and information pasted into browser AI tools may be logged, stored, or used to train external models. This often bypasses predetermined company DLP practices or encryption policies. It’s common for GenAI platforms to also save submitted information, which compounds the privacy risk.
- Non-Compliance: User activity with shadow AI doesn’t show up in traditional security logs. That makes compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR a challenge. Regulatory fines can be severe if customer or financial data inadvertently ends up with an outside provider.
- Operational Unpredictability: AI-powered tools and agentic browsers can make decisions or generate output that users assume is correct. However, those decisions might be biased or incorrect. For example, marketers might use AI copy suggestions that inadvertently leak strategy details.
- Loss of Investigative Visibility: If a leak, a breach, or even employee misuse occurs, security teams are left with no record of what happened. This lack of forensics makes it nearly impossible to understand what data was involved, how far it spread, or even who was responsible.
Real-World Example: The Perplexity Comet Attack
A recent vulnerability in Perplexity’s Comet browser showed how real this threat is.
Researchers demonstrated that a hidden prompt inside a Reddit comment could force the AI assistant to disclose private information, perform unauthorized actions across other websites, and trigger navigation and data extraction workflows.
All of this happened without exploiting a browser vulnerability. The AI simply followed a malicious instruction embedded in a page, acting across domains with full user authority. This is the new AI-driven browser threat landscape.
How Enterprises Can Take Back Control
Now that the risks have been laid out, there are a number of ways your organization can take back control and avoid the pitfalls of browser-driven shadow AI:
- Browser Session Monitoring: Security solutions, such as a Secure Enterprise Browser that has visibility into what happens inside browser sessions, can spot risky AI behavior. Actions like copy/paste into prompts or unapproved extension use can be monitored without blocking productivity. Granular controls and real-time analytics mean IT teams can flag or alert risky behavior as it happens, not after the fact.
- AI Use Policies: Enterprises need clear, communicated rules on which AI tools are approved. Moreover, they need to know where they can be used and what sensitive info should never be shared. Policies should explicitly state that confidential data, financials, source code, or customer information should never be shared with AI models unless they have been permitted.
- Identity Controls: Connecting AI tool permissions with zero-trust controls helps prevent shadow accounts and limits exposure when an employee departs from the company. These controls also enable organizations to restrict access to only a vetted, trusted set of AI platforms.
- Employee Education: Regular communication and awareness training can keep shadow AI in check. Be sure to remind your teams why careful use matters and how it protects the entire organization. Share training materials and easy-to-report processes to help create a culture of responsibility around emerging GenAI tools.
Final Thoughts: The Browser Is Becoming an AI Endpoint
AI is transforming the browser from a passive rendering engine into an active execution environment, making it the new frontline of enterprise AI security. Shadow AI slips past traditional defenses because it lives inside the one-layer security teams have historically ignored: the browser runtime. Unless organizations adopt visibility and control at this layer, AI assistants and agents will continue to act as invisible, unmanaged, highly privileged subsystems inside the enterprise.
The organizations that secure the browser today will be the ones that can safely embrace AI tomorrow.
To speak with a browser security expert or learn more about browser-agnostic Secure Enterprise Browser (SEB) solutions, click here.
About the Author: Suresh Batchu is the COO and a Co-founder of Seraphic. Before joining Seraphic, he co-founded MobileIron, which went public in 2014 and was later acquired by Ivanti in 2020. He also served as an investor, advisor, and board member for CloudKnox, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2021. Suresh holds an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of South Florida and holds 46 patents in the areas of Networking, Security, Identity, and Mobility.
Suresh Batchu — COO and co-founder atSeraphic Securityhttps://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgynrC7nAHX0DmaD7ziyT-wUJyHeuqr-KQvFIHipZJDRXbkoncWtkuFgmQiVECqnczdBvTq7yjl6gJ1O_F2q5Y-WyJOtVByPY2ag5jZcodSaEkuTR33fWCMYRlO8CT1YegcVL5h2TlUx8egcVg6_LCaGATcxWV2VElsF_XKqqTNU_emKZAKkAYg0Pc3Jec/s728-rw-e365/suresh.png
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