Firefox to evolve into not existing.
If they truly believe in their AI offerings, they should release them as an extension so users can choose to install them. You only bundle shit people don’t want. If it’s good, you distribute it stand-alone.
But why !? Chatbots are useful enough, I don’t need AI anywhere else than when I explicitly choose to use it on my terms !
You wanna make money ? Make a chatbot that lies less and/or doesn’t reinforce people into their delusions, or one that runs for cheaper, or both.
AI is useful. Just like knives are useful. Doesn’t mean I want every object I own to also somehow be or contain multiple knives 😅
More often than not, a faster horse is actually all we need.
Chrome =/= Chromium, like Android =/= AOSP folks… just to clarify.
Bring on ladybird!
WE. DON’T. WANT. THIS.
Mozilla, for the love of god, stop cramming AI into the browser when the vast majority of your users just want a privacy-respecting browser that works.
I’ve said it before, and I’ve said it again: I will not donate any more money to the Mozilla foundation until they stop cramming AI into everything, and you should too.
They might be getting money from google that tells them what to do.
Nah, Google funds them so they can point at them and say they aren’t a monopoly, directing what they do would ruin that.
Mozilla’s perfectly capable of making dumb decisions on their own, they do that plenty
¿Why not both?
Because google only pays Mozilla because of:
- Maintaining search dominance
- Preventing anti-monopoly scrutiny
They don’t want Mozilla to compete in any AI space, because there’s already a ton of competition in the AI space given how much money gets thrown around, so they don’t benefit from anti-monopoly efforts, and there’s so many models that they don’t benefit from search dominance in the AI space. They’d much rather have Mozilla stay a non-AI browser while they get to implement AI features and show shareholders that they’re “the most advanced” of them all, or that “nobody else is doing it like we do”.
There’s no real way Mozilla could compete. Google has nothing to fear on that front like the browser front. It’s far more likely Mozilla’s ultimate intention. Is to integrate Gemini or similar further into the browser than they already have. Mozilla is years late to the circle jerk, and everyone else has partnered up.
I wish you weren’t right. I remember old firefox.
I will never forgive.
They are, but that’s only for the search engine thing. Unless Google has a seat on the board.
It’s for the default search, but it also has the side benefit of ensuring a secondary browser with decent market share that’s not Chromium-based they can point to claiming they’re not a monopoly.
Google donates to KDE also
Read what the new CEO says, and it doesn’t seem as bad. In the interview, he states that they’ll be adding AI with options, and since they’re not beholden to any one company, the user can choose what is best for them.
My guess: A sidebar chat you can disable, which allows you to pick your provider, and an
about:configthat let’s you customize the URL for local AI.Would I rather time be devoted elsewhere? Yes. Would this be horrible? Nah.
That being said, I could be totally wrong.
you can sign up to receive updates on our AI Window and be among the first to try it and give us feedback.
I wonder if we all sign up and tell them we don’t want it if they would actually listen.
You should actually read their statements, rather than a headline from an article with a clear agenda. They are making these features optional and unobtrusive.
Their statement is “we’re incorporating AI into your browser”. What “agenda” do you think this author has? Other than informing users?
Mozilla already has limited resources. Using them to incorporate features into their browsers that their users have already made it abundantly clear they do not want, is bad.
That has not at all been our lived experience so far.
Every week it seems like there is a new AI feature snuck in that we have to tell each other about and disable.
The problem is, it’s not unobtrusive.
When I right click and I instantly get an option silently added to the list that sends data to an AI model hosted somewhere, which I’ve accidentally clicked due to muscle memory, it’s not good just because there’s also the option there to disable it. When I start up my browser after an update and I am instantly given an open sidebar asking me to pick an AI model to use, that’s obtrusive and annoying to have to close and disable.
Mozilla has indicated they do not want to make these features opt-in, but opt-out. The majority of Mozilla users do not want these features by default, so the logical option is to make them solely opt-in. But Mozilla isn’t doing that. Mozilla is enabling features by default, without consent, then only taking them away when you tell them to stop.
The approach Mozilla is taking is like if you told a guy you weren’t interested in dating him, but instead of taking that as a “no.” he took it as a “try again with a different pickup line in 2 weeks” and never, ever stopped no matter what you tried. It doesn’t matter that you can tell him to go away now if he’ll just keep coming back.
Mozilla does not understand consent, and they are violating the consent of their users every time they push an update including AI features that are opted-in by default.
i don’t want it either, but AFAIK they’re local models so the data didn’t go anywhere
They don’t use local models yet, at least not for their existing AI chatbot sidebar feature. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot
When you use a chatbot, you are agreeing to that provider’s privacy policies and terms of use. Each chatbot provider has their own terms of use and privacy policies. View the privacy policies and terms for providers in Firefox.
Some chatbots are more privacy-respecting than others.
If it’s installed and I have to turn it off, then it’s intrusive. Don’t bullshit me
Is “the vast majority of your users” your display name or something? I have those turned off in my client settings
Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.
Come on, this isn’t Reddit, at least skim the article before you start with the performative outrage.
It should be something that people can easily turn ON.
It is opt in, this article is click bait.
Directly from the horses mouth:
"In Firefox, you’ll never be locked into one ecosystem or have AI forced into your browsing experience. You decide when, how or whether to use it at all. You’ve already seen this approach in action through some of our latest features like the AI chatbot in the sidebar for desktop or Shake to Summarize on iOS.
Now, we’re excited to invite you to help shape the work on our next innovation: an AI Window. It’s a new, intelligent and user-controlled space we’re building in Firefox that lets you chat with an AI assistant and get help while you browse, all on your terms. Completely opt-in, you have full control, and if you try it and find it’s not for you, you can choose to switch it off."
We’ll just ignore the fact that the chat bot menu setting randomly appeared after an update. Very opt in. The only way to kill the task it sparks is to go into about:config and kill all the browser.ml.* options.
No one here cares what Firefox says because their actions have already hurt the trust in them.
Do the processes still run even if you toggle the setting off?
Just going through settings was not enough. The process was still running. I don’t know which toggle fully killed it because I clicked everything off at once.
Except I literally had to dig through the about: config settings to turn off AI in my browsing experience. So they are already lying
I didn’t. So why is that?
Ah yes, the classic:
They must be maliciously lying instead of me using something wrong argument.
Very solid, much sound.
I can flip that around for you: “Ah yes, the classic: the user must be in the wrong, not the organisation with a history of secretly installing an extension nobody asked for”.
If it’s so easy to “use wrong” then it’s badly designed software.
Any articles can be a click bait. The reality is what matters.
I didnt turn on AI in Firefox myself. It just appeared there after an update and was turned on. It is not opt in but an opt out.
It’s not needed. Nobody is looking for AI powered shit and they will feel it in their numbers. Why invest the pennies Mozilla can invest in a technology that big monsters are developing with billions and billions of dollars and natural resources? It’s not even reasonable, like a Pocket 2.0.
Unfortunate Newsflash:
It’s smaller reddit.
The lowest common denominator consumes all. And that denominator includes not being able to read articles or apply critical thought.
The problem is the “AI” presence in itself. It shouldn’t be in Firefox at all, or frankly in any other software.
Also, corporations and their CEOs lie every single day, you know.
Nobody’s saying it’s mandatory. People don’t want their web browsers to be full of bloated AI slop. Why should there be the AI components of Firefox on my hard drive if I’m never going to use them? Why should my web browser be full of low quality features I’ll never use? It’s enshittification. Not to mention the very quote you’re pasting specifies that it’s opt-out, not opt-in.
But how could the trolls enrage well meaning people into moving to a less privacy respecting browser if the post wasn’t designed for performative outrage?
Few read the articles around here, like any social media. I could come with a headline that Bill Gates proposed using trans people’s brains for AI processing, Matrix style, and harvesting the water of the dead ones, a la Dune. Lemmy would eat it up.
Nnnoooooo you dumb bastards
Jfc. The stupidest timeline, I fucking swear.
It’s the natural progression of capitalism and market force fundamentalism.
It’s a sort of religion.
Ew ew ew.
No one is asking for AI, you weirdos!
I don’t think our Lemmy comments are going to reach Googles…I mean Mozilla’s boardroom.
WTF man, I just want a fucking browser.
Yall saw Microsoft push stupid Copilot on everyone and fail miserably and said, “hold my beer!”
Bros, take the hint! No one wants AI bullshit. Firefox was the goto switch when Google Chrome was using 37 processes and 98% memory for one website… yall are fuckin up!
IT department at my job encourages everyone to use Copilot and try to implement it more… I don’t even know WHY I’d do it in the first place
That directive came from them but they didn’t want to issue it. I guarentee you the were told by higher ups to say that.
They claimed it’s for “safety” as “microsoft is to be trusted more than OpenAI” oh the irony!
also, not really higher ups to dictate our IT what to use, that makes it even better…
I work in IT with end users who average 45-50 years old. I can tell you where that message came from.
We’ve got users working with sensitive private information who are starting to use tools like ChatGPT and Gemini because their college kids told them they’re helpful for checking writing, or work better than search engines. Our users work remotely and if they decide to take a picture of what they’re working on and feed it into an OCR, there’s not much we can do to stop it. So we need to provide a sanctioned tool that at least gives us some controls over how data is handled and stored (not that Microsoft provides anything vaguely resembling perfect data transit and analysis into Copilot) so we can try to protect sensitive information and our end users as much as possible. Are we happy about having to deploy AI tools? Not even a little bit. I’d be happier if we all just collectively rolled back a few years. But our options are sanctioned tool and policy or failing audits and here we are.
My take is a little different. If people really want AI they should pay additional cost and AI should be a addon feature on your PC.
Additional Costs -> more powerful AI centered Chips ( as least as possible power consumption ) which can use much much more local fast memory ( imho 256 GB should be in the long term the minimum ).
That enables local AI’s to be the solution for privacy and control of long term costs and i guess in 99% local AI’s will do the job fine enough.
Sadly noone will be on our side cause they want to put AI Usage / PC Usage overall behind a monthly subscription in the long term.
Right now we are just as always in the phase of making people depending on a technology.
Remote workers have webcams. Set things up so if it seems a camera phone aimed at the screen it takes a shot, sends the event to management they check it and decide wether to fire people for violating policy.
Yeah I don’t know about the ethics of that…
MS reps tightening the screw.
Management most likely read their horoscopes in some business blog.
The ai bubble is strong
Ready for this internet fad to die and go back to stone tablets.
Im not a luddite, I’ll still use clay tablets.
I’m also not a luddite, I’ll use pen and paper thank you very much
How gauche - a quill and vellum does the exact same job!
Can I tempt you to join the fountain pen gang? We have shiny nibs and fun coloured inks to match your mood!
Hmmmm, is there sparkly inks? If so then sparkly and shiny is enough to convince me.
Oh yes, some inks are very sparkly.
I said this yesterday lol!
