Let’s have a look at how it works now, so we don’t need to speculate.
When I configured Firefox for AI, I got to choose my LLM of choice. I chose Claude. Now, if I select some text, I get a context menu option that says “Ask Anthropic Claude”, which branches into these options:
- Summarize
- Explain
- Quiz me
- Proofread
- Remove Anthropic Claude
Notice the last one? That’s not a “buried” option. That’s as front and center as the options to use it. Mind you, if I decide to not use it, then nothing happens. The only thing that’s changed is that I now have an optional shortcut for LLM features that open in a sidebar instead of a new tab.
Oh, the humanity.
tauonite@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I mean yeah, that’s a fair point, and the dev said that themselves, that the definition of opt in is ambiguous. The definition they seem to use is that AI won’t run unless you explicitly tell it to, and I think that’s ok. There’ll be a button that you can press to do some AI action and you can hide it using the kill switch.
I do hope the kill switch isn’t hidden behind 5 layers of menus
rainwall@piefed.social 18 hours ago
Thats not ambuguity. AI will be opt out in firefox, which is them abandoning core principles like user choice and privacy.
They can do that, but playing like they arebt by redefining well established term in UI/UX to try to hide the fact that they are is disengenious, and cuts right through the “we will earn your trust back” messaging made by the same dev.
hikaru755@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
A feature that will not do anything unless you explicitly press a button to start using it is quite literally opt-in, though? Opt-in doesn’t mean “I won’t even know the feature exists without hunting through the settings”. It just means that it won’t start doing things without your consent. Presenting a way to provide that consent in a more visible place than buried deeply in the settings does not make it opt-out. It might be a bit annoying to you, but it has no effect on your user choice or privacy, especially if there’s a way to globally hide it and any other features like it, including new ones that might be added in the future.
tauonite@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
I think it’s quite clear there’s ambiguity (hence this discussion). How would you define opt in? Should a user not even see the button for an opt in feature?
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 hours ago
I think the big defining question is what will the AI features that they will implement do exactly and how will they run. If it’s something that runs in the background (even as unintrusive as the summaries on a search engine like DDG), then it’s opt out by default as it’s constantly running whether you want it to or not. If it specifically and exclusively runs when you hit the button to activate it and doesn’t run at any other time, then I’d say it’s unequivocally opt in. And regardless of what a company says that their software will do, at this point I won’t believe it until somebody has done a full teardown and discerned what exactly it does behind the scenes. I’ve seen enough nonsense like the Epic Games Store accessing your browser history and recording keyboard inputs or whatever the other absurd incident was.
yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 hours ago
Nah, I think it should be optional. Some AI features may even be useful — like an AI script to get rid of AI slop or something, idk.