people please actually read the article not the headline; this is literally about accessibility improvements for blind and visually impaired people for generating alt text inside of documents and pdfs.
Mozilla roll out first AI features in Firefox Nightly
Submitted 4 months ago by ray@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/ai-services-on-firefox/
Comments
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
proti@lemmy.world 4 months ago
yeah but AI bad no matter if it would be actually useful for once
orclev@lemmy.world 4 months ago
That’s one of the things, but it’s also adding a dedicated sidebar for AI. That’s the sort of thing that should just be an extension, there’s absolutely no reason at all why that needs to be something built into the browser.
Developers should be providing alt text themselves, but in cases where they aren’t having a local image recognition model running to provide a description isn’t terrible as long as it’s either 100% local or completely opt-in.
The dedicated sidebar on the other hand feels very much like a cheap attempt to cash in on the AI fad.
barsoap@lemm.ee 4 months ago
That’s the sort of thing that should just be an extension
It most likely is on the technical level, just shipped by default and integrated into standard settings instead of the add-on ones. And it’s going to be opt-in, so you won’t have to go into
about:configto disable it. Speaking of: You’re looking forextensions.pocket.enabled, it should befalse. And before you say “muh diskspace” it’s probably like 5k of js and css or such.
cheddar@programming.dev 4 months ago
Those who have opted-in will have the option to access their preferred AI service from the Firefox sidebar to summarize information, simplify language, or test their knowledge, all without leaving their current web page.
Our initial offering will include ChatGPT, Google Gemini, HuggingChat, and Le Chat Mistral
librejoe@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I don’t care. I don’t want AI in my browser.
themurphy@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
Great take.
original2@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Ai ScArY!¡! And you haven’t ever used google translate?
douglasg14b@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Now we just need accessibility tools for the cognitively impaired that can’t seem to read the damn article.
bamboo@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Many of the people complaining about a feature they would just disable and never use are also the same kinds of people who would complain about basic accessibility features and call them “unnecessary bloat”.
Poot@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
“Trustworthy AI” + Recent aquisiton of an advertising analytics company + a call for people to inform on third party sources of Firefox = Down the enshitification rabbit hole we go.
theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Any recommendations of a good alternative on android? I’m thinking I’ll move to librewolf on desktop but they don’t appear to have an android version.
cravl@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
I use a fork from F-Droid called Fennec. I’m not sure off the top of my head how closely it tracks with upstream feature-wise but I know it strips out all of Mozilla’s tracking components and it’s always updated within a couple days of the upstream release.
maynarkh@feddit.nl 4 months ago
I do like Mull, but I’m also uninformed and I don’t use my mobile browser all too much.
CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
I use Fennec F-Droid on Android and LibreWolf on Linux/Mac/Windows.
sunzu@kbin.run 4 months ago
Everybody in the know is already using privacy forks on PC and phones... i guess it is time to get normies on boarded.
Man, they really are making it complicated though. If you want to fight them, jgot to keep switching. They know normies won't :/
maxinstuff@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Why does my open source browser need proprietary SaaS products stuffed into it?
Isn’t this what extensions are for?
RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
It also has google stuffed into it, and apparently the new consensus is that you need AI just as much for browsing as a search engine
rovingnothing29@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Who else is gonna parse through the AI search results? Not me.
cley_faye@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Firefox has a tendency to embed optional extensions as impossible to uninstall core features these days, so it would not change much.
dinckelman@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I wish they spent their time fixing bugs, rather than implementing this bullshit
Openopenopenopen@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Can I ask areal question? I’m not trying to be a dick or smart ass, I legit don’t get this. What is bullshit here? I read the article and it seems like a useful feature to me.
“this week, we will launch an opt-in experiment”
“those who have opted-in will have the option to access their preferred AI service from the Firefox sidebar”
Is this opt in only feature really terrible? Because as a user of ai, not switching tabs sounds like a nice new feature to me.
dinckelman@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I strongly believe that generative AI is catastrophically misused in the vast majority of its applications, so in my eyes, adding gpt-based AI to the browser is largely a wasted
FaceDeer@fedia.io 4 months ago
Why not both? A large project like this needs to fix bugs and also continue to refine its features for long term relevance.
dinckelman@lemmy.world 4 months ago
You will never achieve long-term relevance, by chasing immediately available buzzwords
FaceDeer@fedia.io 4 months ago
Why not both? A large project like this needs to fix bugs and also continue to refine its features for long term relevance.
Redex68@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Honestly, the worst part of the AI craze is that so many people hear AI now and immediately hate it even though it can really do some amazing stuff, e.g. in medicine. AI as a blanket term just has so much variance, there’s a ton of trash and a ton of great stuff.
yukijoou@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
“AI” today mostly refers to LLMs, and whichever LLM you’re using, you’ll likely face the same issues (wrong answers creeping in, tending towards mediocrity in its answers, etc.) - those seem to be things you have to live with if you want to use LLMs. if you know you can’t deal with it, another rebrand won’t help anything
firepenny@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Part of the problem is that all ads anymore want push their version of “AI” in your face and some of these “AI” are nothing new just rebranded.
mesamunefire@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Part of my research as an undergrad was working with PLSA. It’s very much an algorithm.
Allero@lemmy.today 4 months ago
Our initial offering will include ChatGPT, Google Gemini, HuggingChat, and Le Chat Mistral, but we will continue adding AI services that meet our standards for quality and user experience.
Is that the same Mozilla that started the Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness?
What in living hell do proprietary and predatory AI services even doing here?
Mozilla just offered users to feed into the very abomination they claim to fight.
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
“Our initial offering”
They said in the article theyll also offer the use of self-hosted models later
StarlightDust@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
The new CEO of Mozilla, Laura Chambers, has a background working at all sorts of evil companies like AirBnB and PayPal. Its absolutely no surprise that the company immediately dropped plans to diversify in ethical, unique and privacy friendly ways as soon as she joined.
CEOs getting paid primarily in stock means grifters like this will drop their USP for whatever trend makes the line go up, if it is crypto, NFTs, or AI.
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Shes not the new ceo, shes a temporary interik ceo while they find someone better
orclev@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Pretty sure the only thing I wouldn’t object to AI being used for in Firefox would be ad blocking. Surely they’re going to use this for that right?
…
Right?
…
Shit.
299792458ms@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Not going to lie, AI can be a very powerfull tool but the “we want your browsing experience to be divine, but don’t worry we have your back” scares me shitless. Firefox has always had our backs, why do they feel the need to mention it now? Maybe I’m being paranoid but I feel like a browser shoulf just be a browser.
cley_faye@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Firefox has always had our backs
It’s been going in a less friendly direction for a while. Embedding of mandatory useless extensions, aggressive advertising, deals to display more and more content to more users, disregard for user settings on multiple updates, opt-out telemetry, and now telling you that you’re using it wrong.
Sure, you can navigate through various settings to disable most of these, and check back on updates for settings that toggles back, or are simply renamed and mysteriously got back to their default, intrusive value. But we should not have to do that.
And that’s not even touching the issue with the Mozilla Corporation itself.
Firefox is the alternative browser, but it certainly isn’t there to “have your back”.
nick@midwest.social 4 months ago
No fuckin’ thanks.
BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Why Mozilla? Why? You were the chosen one… Fuck it, I’m going back to lynx! Tabs? Sure we have tabs in lynx, just run lynx in tmux
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
what? Its opt-in
BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Sorry I can’t read your reply, lynx doesn’t render it properly ;)
captainjaneway@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I think it makes sense. I like ChatGPT and I appreciate having easy access to it. What I really wish is the option to use local models instead. I realize most people don’t have machines that can tokenize quickly enough but for those that do…
maxinstuff@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Seconding this. Why not allow people to run llama3 or other open source models?
ahal@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
From the post:
Whether it’s a local or a cloud-based model, if you want to use AI, we think you should have the freedom to use (or not use) the tools that best suit your needs
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
From the post it seems like theyll ad support for self-hosted models before the feature leaves beta
GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
native tab grouping would be a much more desirable feature, to me
crusty@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
mesamunefire@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Any good forks without the ai? I really don’t want that many ai companies with my data.
priapus@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
They’re not just giving these AI companies your data…
It’s an optional feature, and you would choose which model you use. If you choose not to use it, or disable the feature, nobody will recieve your data. If you want a browser without these features, Librewolf will likely be a safe choice, as I don’t seem them adding this.
mesamunefire@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Were in the code is this?
InfiniWheel@lemmy.one 4 months ago
The only active AI feature is the automatic alt text one, and that’s entirely local. The second one is a sidebar that will just open AI chat websites, which you could already do by just, ya know, looking up the webpages the regular way. No data is getting sent anywhere so far.
MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Anyone have any other good suggestions for Firefox alternatives? Sounds like I may be needing to switch soon.
cyclonic_affinity@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I highly recommend everyone making the switch to Librewolf. It’s a custom version of Firefox that focuses on the things that matter like privacy and security, while cutting out the annoyances that Mozilla loves to add to their browsers.
MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Oh. This looks great. Thank you for sharing.
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
why would you need to switch, did you read the article?
MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I did. I’m not needing to switch. At least not right now. (hence the ‘may’ in my original comment) But given the Laura Chambers interim CEO thing and now this LLM integration. Mozilla seems to be making moves that I don’t agree with. But as long as they stay true to their key tennents I won’t need to switch. Which would be good. Because I really don’t want to. But I’ve seen a enough good companies become bad companies that I’m weary for the future of the app. So being aware of what alternatives may be out there would be helpful.
blackris@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
There are none.
MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Well shit.
AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 4 months ago
The way I see AI being implemented into Firefox, regardless of whether it’s gonna be opt-in or out in the future is that they need to keep up with the latest browser trends in the future. If they don’t, they will definitely lose more of whatever probably small amount of remaining normies who don’t use edge or chrome but instead opt for Firefox. They’re not tech literate enough to see a conveniently placed ad telling them that xyz browser now uses AI security features and Firefox doesn’t and discern the fact that it’s a ploy to get them to switch. We need more normies if we really want a chance to keep Firefox more than just treadingn water, and the best way is to offer more random bullshit of the week to keep them from switching to a competitor.
Boxscape@lemmy.sdf.org 4 months ago
squirrelwithnut@lemmy.world 4 months ago
As long as I can disable it, sure. Knock yourself out.
shotgun_crab@lemmy.world 4 months ago
It already has AI-powered translations though?
autonomoususer@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Local or service as a software substitute?
priapus@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
I hope they add DuckDuckGo as a provider. I use their chat with Mixtral often.
librejoe@lemmy.world 4 months ago
And we say goodbye to Firefox. NEXT!
gnuhaut@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
What
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
Defund Mozilla lmao. Absolute shipwreck of a company at this point.
admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 4 months ago
At least this is opt-in, and Firefox still allows for manifest v3 extensions, and, on the whole, isn’t using a engine funded by a billion dollar company that’s doing everything in it’s power to spy on you.
Openopenopenopen@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Did you read the article? Why would adding an option to use ai in a side bar require shuttering a company?
“this week, we will launch an opt-in experiment”
And
“those who have opted-in will have the option to access their preferred AI service from the Firefox sidebar”
librejoe@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Who do we turn to for a browser? Not chromium based I don’t trust google codebase.
TheFrirish@jlai.lu 4 months ago
I would relatively ok with an implementation of Le Chat Mistral