“It’s safe to say that the people who volunteered to “shape” the initiative want it dead and buried. Of the 52 responses at the time of writing, all rejected the idea and asked Mozilla to stop shoving AI features into Firefox.”
Hey all, just a reminder to keep the community rules in mind when commenting on this thread. Criticism in any direction is fine, but please maintain your civility and don’t stoop to ad-hominem etc. Thanks.
Ad-hominem
in a way that is directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.
in a way that relates to or is associated with a particular person.
It’s a good thing LLM models are not people because…
If it can be proven that an LLM bot account is present on the instance masquerading as a human user, I would recommend you report the account for that reason/spam so that it can be investigated and removed per instance rule 4 after evidence is found.
Since they aren’t people, I’d say it’s pointless to reply to them with ad-hominem in the first place since it means nothing to them, and therefore reporting it would be the more effective action to take in any event.
don’t stoop to ad-hominem
At this point Ad-hominem is practically the nice name for the business model “enshitification”.
So much whining… Please get to know the things you attack, before you embarrass yourself.
Do you know what a “build in AI” is? It’s just some algorithms that makes your day easier. And no one steals your data… sigh
It’s a local collection of algorithms, and you are quite safe. You probably already use it in so many ways you can’t count them - it’s just not called “AI” which I guess is the trigger word for you…
So much wtf. Please name one way I use AI without knowing it, and ways that enrage me don’t count.
Using a search engine would be one.
Nope. The “AI summary” is something I disable on Google and I try to actively avoid it because it enrages me. It’s total dogshit.
The algorithms to determine which pages are most relevant to your query are traditionally seen as AI too. They’re just not labelled as such (which was the point), and predate the current AI hype.
I hadn’t even thought about the “AI modes” that search engines are incorporating nowadays though, so I get the confusion.
That’s a fair point. But search algorithms fall under the “recommender system” umbrella, which are a very different family from the agentic AI we’re discussing here.
Both are AIs, but with very different use cases. In the same way, you could technically classify both your gaming PC and phone as computers, and you’d be correct.
Edit: links
It was my impression that the thread started wasn’t just talking about agentic AI. And I think a lot of the “anti AI folks” here are also angry about recent non-agentic AI additions that Mozilla added, such as e.g. tab recommendations for tab groups.
The post is about the new AI Window feature, and here’s its description from Mozilla’s own announcement:
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.
So, definitely agentic.
And I think a lot of the “anti AI folks” here are also angry about recent non-agentic AI additions that Mozilla added, such as e.g. tab recommendations for tab groups.
I’ll speak honestly: I’m not happy with that either. But that’s incidental to this topic. The agentic component is my biggest concern.
I exclusively use https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
So no.
Well, then give me a report of everything you use IT for… You phone, apps, tablets, computers, smart tv’s and so forth?
Um, nah… ? I actively avoid half those things and yet use computers constantly. The burden would be on you. So perhaps you can actually give examples that would be true of a lot of people. I feel like you think lemmy users are like most people and just along with what’s popular, but that’s not the case, particularly with computing concerns.
Damn you are not really well, are you? You want me to tell you exactly where you use build in “AI” that helps you make decisions, but you won’t tell me what you use?!? I don’t have to prove anything. My claim stands. I can see that you are using some kind of computer, and the internet. You are using algorithms that act the way AI does… But I guess you are too blind to see… That’s on you. Keep living in your little illusion of a world. 🙃
Damn you are not really well, are you?
Says the person who wants a full inventory of my computing hardware. What a fucking bizarre human.
Well, you wanted me to tell you what AI-like algorithms you were using - and you expect me to do that from no information? You really are not well…
So much whining… Please get to know the things you attack, before you embarrass yourself.
I’m a senior full-stack engineer at a recruitment startup. I’m the one responsible for the AI side of things. We do document analysis of résumés and all kinds of identification documents and photos. We also run various assistant chatbots that interact with users and accept file uploads, do job interviews and much more. I think I know enough not to embarrass myself.
Do you know what a “build in AI” is? It’s just some algorithms that makes your day easier.
No. A “built-in AI” is not a collection of “magic algorithms” that suddenly make life better. Working with AI is some of the worst hours I’ve ever spent of my life. Writing increasingly convoluted prompts to make it follow explicitly stated instructions for the N-th time in order not to misuse tools or output the correct structured data is not magic. It’s an exercise in futility most of the time.
And no one steals your data… sigh
It’s a local collection of algorithms, and you are quite safe.
So… You’re introducing an autonomous agent between you and the web you’re browsing. With the sole purpose of making decisions and taking actions on your behalf.
Aside from all the privacy concerns and assuming that the models actually run locally; all code can have bugs, and worse: this “magic tool” is an amorphous collection of floating point numbers and you can’t debug a neural net’s weights. And this thing is already proven to HALLUCINATE.
If this thing has permission to freely interact with web pages, then sorry, your data will never be safe.
You probably already use it in so many ways you can’t count them - it’s just not called “AI” which I guess is the trigger word for you…
I think you’re the one confusing the terminology.
Oh, you work for Mozilla Firefox, do you?
Being childish and trying to turn what I say into “magic algorithms”
GZ with your made up title, which must be made up, given the crazy ramblings you are making.
The “AI” that Firefox is implementing is not “autonomous” - do look up the definitions, please! It is not sentient, it can’t hallucinate, since it is not sentient. What the big tech are making (their LLM) can’t hallucinate either - they just do something that looks like it, and we put silly terms on it, like hallucinating. You are NOT getting a neural network on your own computer when you install Firefox - now you are just being daft!
You are confused, paranoid and really prove, that you should get to know what you are talking about. sigh
Are you purposefully trolling or just that level of ignorant? I’m done responding here regardless, just curious.
I’ll take that as a no, you are not working for Mozilla. You are being childish by calling it “magic algorithms”. You don’t even know what kind of “AI” FF are talking about…
I would run too, if I were caught in the lies you have spun here.
You want AI in your browser? Just add <your favourite spying ad machine> as a “search engine” option, with a URL like
https://chatgpt.com/?q=%25s, with a shortcut like
@ai. Maybe also add one with a URL with some query pre-written likehttps://chatgpt.com/?q=summarize this page for me: %sas
@aisor something, modern chatbots have the ability to make HTTP requests for you. Then if you want to summarize the page you’re on, you do Ctrl+L Ctrl+C @ais Ctrl+V Enter. There, I solved all your AI needs with 4 shortcuts without literally any client-side code.I think Mozilla’s base is privacy focused individuals, a lot of them appreciating firefox’s opensource nature and the privacy hardened firefox forks. From a PR perspective, Firefox will gain users by adamantly going against AI tech.
Maybe their thought process is they’ll gain more users by adopting AI while knowing they’re still the most privacy focused of the major browsers. Where have I seen this mentality before?
Spoiler
The American Democrat party often believes it can get more votes by shifting conservative, believing the more progressive voters will stick pick them because they’re still more progressive than not.
If you don’t like AI window, don’t use AI window. I don’t see the problem.
Except if AI Window turns out to be another resident subprocess that eats 4GB of ram in the background
Is that what it’s doing?
I haven’t heard about it anywhere. But considering Firefox’s history with memory handling and considering the feature in question, I’m calling it. I’m reasonably sure that’s how it’s going to turn out
I don’t see any technical background about it. Just a marketing spiel
Opt-in
??
What does being opt-in or opt-out have to do with resource consumption? It will still consume resources even if you’re not using it. It might even reserve memory while inactive for faster startup by default.
Even if you completely disable it, just having it built into the default binary already consumes resources.
It depends. If it’s just for the sake of plugging AI because it’s cool and trendy, fuck no.
If it’s to improve privacy, accessibility and minimize our dependency on big tech, then I think it’s a good idea.
A good example of AI in Firefox is the Translate feature (Project Bergamot). It works entirely locally, but relies on trained models to provide translation on-demand, without having Google, etc as the middle-man, and Mozilla has no idea what you translates, just which language model(s) you downloaded.
Another example is local alt-text generation for images, which also requires a trained model. Again, works entirely locally, and provide some accessibility to users with a vision impairment when an image doesn’t provide caption.
Totally agree. Just because generally AI is bad and used in stupid ways, it doesn’t mean that all AI is useless or without meaning. Clearly if you look at the trends, people are using chatbots as search engines. This is not Mozilla forcing anything on us, we are doing this. At that point I much prefer them to develop a system that lets us use gpts to surf the web in the most convenient and private way possible. So far I have been very happy with how Mozilla has implemented AI in Firefox. I don’t feel the bloat, it is not shoved in my face, and it is under my control. We don’t have to make it a witch hunt. Not everything is either horrible or beautiful.
Why not just distribute a separate build and call it “Firefox AI Edition” or something? Making this available in the base binary is a big mistake. At least doing so immediately and without testing the waters.
I am actually curious if gentoo community sees a noticeable increase in time for updating/installing with all these new AI features on everything.
They’re really trying to shove this down our throats aren’t they?
Personally I don’t want AI anywhere.
Doesn’t matter what the end-user wants. Corporate greed feeding into technological ignorance is gonna shove it down our throats anyway
Hear me out.
This could actually be cool:
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If I could, say, mash in “get rid of the junk in this page” or “turn the page this color” or “navigate this form for me”
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If it could block SEO and AI slop from search/pages, including images.
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If I can pick my own API (including local) and sampling parameters
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If it doesn’t preload any model in RAM.
…That’d be neat.
What I don’t want is a chatbot or summarizer or deep researcher because there are 7000 bajillion of those, and there is literally no advantage to FF baking it in like every other service on the planet.
And… Honestly, PCs are not ready for local LLMs. Not even the most hyper optimized trellis quantization of Qwen3 30B is ‘good enough’ to be reliable for the average person, and it still takes too much CPU RAM. Much less the suboptimal version Mozilla would ship.
If I can pick my own API (including local) and sampling parameters
You can do this now:
- selfhost ollama.
- selfhost open-webui and point it to ollama
- enable local models in about:config
- select “local” instead of ChatGPT or w/e.
Hardest part is hosting open-webui because AFAIK it only ships as a docker image.
Edit: s/openai/open-webui
Open WebUI isn’t very ‘open’ and kinda problematic last I saw. Same with ollama; you should absolutely avoid either.
…And actually, why is open web ui even needed? For an embeddings model or something? All the browser should need is an openai compatible endpoint.
The firefox AI sidebar embeds an external open-webui. It doesn’t roll its own ui for chat. Everything with AI is done in the quickest laziest way.
What exactly isn’t very open about open-webui or ollama? Are there some binary blobs or weird copyright licensing? What alternatives are you suggesting?
https://old.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1kfhkal/open_webui_is_no_longer_open_source/
https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1mncrqp/ollama/
Basically, they’re both using their popularity to push proprietary bits, which their devleopment is shifting to. They’re enshittifying.
In addition, ollama is just a demanding leech on llama.cpp that contributes nothing back, while hiding the connection to the underlying library at every opportunity. They do scummy things like.
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Rename models for SEO, like “Deepseek R1” which is really the 7b distill.
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It has really bad default settings (like a 2K default context limit, and default imatrix free quants) which give local LLM runners bad impressions of the whole ecosystem.
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They mess with chat templates, and on top of that, create other bugs that don’t exist in base llama.cpp
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Sometimes, they lag behind GGUF support.
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And other times, they make thier own sloppy implementations for ‘day 1’ support of trending models. They often work poorly; the support’s just there for SEO. But this also leads to some public GGUFs not working with the underlying llama.cpp library, or working inexplicably bad, polluting the issue tracker of llama.cpp.
I could go on and on with examples of their drama, but needless to say most everyone in localllama hates them. The base llama.cpp maintainers hate them, and they’re nice devs.
You should use llama.cpp llama-server as an API endpoint. Or, alternatively the ik_llama.cpp fork, kobold.cpp, or croco.cpp. Or TabbyAPI as an ‘alternate’ GPU focused quantized runtime. Or SGLang if you just batch small models. Llamacpp-python, LMStudo; literally anything but ollama.
As for the UI, thats a muddier answer and totally depends what you use LLMs for. I use mikupad for its ‘raw’ notebook mode and logit displays, but there are many options. Llama.cpp has a pretty nice built in one now.
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You know what would be really cool? If I could just ask AI to turn off the AI in my browser. Now that would be cool.
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deleted by creator
Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but how can you be aware of this fact
I don’t know whether the negative reactions reflect the majority of Firefox users or are just a noisy minority. Mozilla, after all, likely has a clearer view of the whole user base.
and then still assume that nobody wants something based on a non-representative sample of 52 comments?
B- but- ✨yaiy window!!1!✨!1!!
