Comment on AI controls is coming to Firefox

MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• northernlights@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Plus, even if you can turn it off, the feature is still in the code, needing updates, etc., even if you don’t ever use it. Literal bloat.

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  • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Don’t forget adding additional surface area for security vulnerabilities. Does the off switch prevent a zero day attack via that code? Of course not.

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    • Bazoogle@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The feature would likely need to be enabled to take advantage of such vulnerability in said feature.

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  • XLE@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    At least these features won’t introduce any novel security holes! /s

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• undu@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What’s not changing though is that most of their focus will be on integrating AI which most people don’t want.

  I agree that AI chatbots are absolutely useless and have no place in a browser, but out of the three ML features in the screenshot, one is great for blind people, and another one is great for making the web more multilingual, so their usefulness is quite self-evident. Regarding ethics, at least for the last one it’s using a local model, and was trained using open-source datasets.[1]

  What makes so-called “AI” bad is not the amount of users that can benefit from it, but how useful it is to the people that do use the feature, which usually means having experts tailor machine learning unto a single purpose.

  I personally use the translation feature at least once a week when looking at news article that are not in English, and now I’m using a lot to translate Japanese webpages to plan a holiday there, so I’m very happy that Mozilla has invested time abd collaborated with universities to make this feature, I wish other people were less flippant about it just because it has “AI” in its name.

  [1] …mozilla.org/…/training-efficient-neural-network-…

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  • MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It seems pretty clear to me that despite the ambiguity of the term AI, people are specifically railing against LLMs, not ML. It also seems clear to me that the new Firefox direction as announced by their CEO is to incorporate more LLM specifically into the browser.

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    • JaddedFauceet@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      LLM is a subset of ML. Now screen reader also use LLM to describe image for visual impair users.

      Some of these are tiny LLM that run on mobile hardware.

      There are also LLM that specialize in translation (TranslateGemma), specialized in coding (QwenCode/Devstral), OCR (QwenVL), etc…

      I feel that people should chill out and stop these irrational hate.

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• zewm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Also we have all seen this movie before. They launch with promises of having a choice to turn it on or off… until it’s no longer a choice.

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  • Zarxrax@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    When did Firefox take away a choice that was previously offered?

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    • november@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      All the freaking time?

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      • pycorax@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        A lot of these are extensions that are folded into the main Firefox feature set, experimental features or not even related to the browser?

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    • Verat@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The “open image in new tab” context menu option, off the top of my head, it has been 1000 small things with them.

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      • TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Since when is “open image” gone for you? Are you sure it’s not the site blocking you? Many do that these days, but FF still has the option. There are some addons that can circumvent sites trying to block you (part of the functionality of addons.mozilla.org/en-US/…/search_by_image/ for instance)

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      • pycorax@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Actually now that I checked my Firefox, it’s still there? I’m on version 147.

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    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      This happened quite often for various UI settings etc. Often there were technical reasons for removing the option (e.g. rewrites), but it is a real thing.

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  • TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You were always able to turn it off, now it’s easier.

    You haven’t seen this movie before with Firefox. All the ad stuff and sponsoring integrations like Pocket were always very easy to turn off.

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  • 1984@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Are you talking about Microsoft?

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• BurgerBaron@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  HDR never, woo…

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• catdog@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  To be fair, their reduced focus and the potential pace improvement through LLM assisted coding might cancel each other out. I wouldn’t be surprized if the resulting pace is net zero or better.

  That said: I like Firefox local translations, but haven’t found a use case for its other AI features yet.

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  • MysticKetchup@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    the potential pace improvement through LLM assisted coding

    Have we actually seen any evidence that LLM’s increase the pace of coding? Because in most of the reports I’ve seen there is no measurable difference even when users feel like they’re faster

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    • catdog@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      There are some concerns but yes, development generally accelerates: arxiv.org/abs/2507.03156

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      • lowspeedchase@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        we present a systematic literature review of 37 peer-reviewed studies published between January 2014 and December 2024

        So they AI summarized other people’s work.

        Most studies are exploratory (64%) and methodologically diverse, but lack longitudinal and team-based evaluations.

        And later acknowledge there are major gaps in methodology. I wouldn’t be linking to this as proof of accelerated dev imho.

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      • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        They meant without the cleaning up after it.

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    • 1984@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      What ive read, and what is accurate according to my experience, is that its very fast for creating smaller pieces of code, like scripts, foundations, docs etc. So with a small context, its great.

      As soon as you start to ask it to add features to a larger code base, it will mess things up and add code that is not necessary, and add extra complexity. And it will now be slower to use Ai than before, because now you are spending time iterating and correcting, and you may not even get a working solution at all.

      Thats my experience with Ai.

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    • JaddedFauceet@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I can get LLM to write prototypes and demos in the background while I am working on other parts of the code at the same time.

      with the right prompt, I can generate and scaffold documentation pages, which I may not have time to do so.

      Things are happening in the background and I get more done.

      I feel like I am faster?

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      • MysticKetchup@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Feeling like you’re faster just because you can generate easy, boilerplate code doesn’t actually mean you’re faster if it spits out junk or takes longer to debug/integrate that code, or if tasks require more complex work that LLMs are bad at.

        I just wanted to see some concrete stats given how much everyone is implementing it and hyping it up, as anecdotal evidence is easily biased by shiny new toy syndrome.

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• Crackhappy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’ve already moved several family members away from Chrome, Firefox etc

  Waterfox, while sharing a basic codebase, doesn’t have any of this bullshit and runs like a dream.

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• technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Since “AI” doesn’t exist, anything can be “AI”.

  For example, a translation program is not “AI”.

  But people do want features like translation regardless of how they’re dishonestly marketed.

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• chunes@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What features do you still need after 22 years of development?

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  • Verat@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    HDR, hardware accelerated layout engine (servo)

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