Disable AI in Firefox • Hacker News Board

Personally, I do not mind it if it's on-device, especially small specialised models (e.g. overview generation, audio generation, etc) with no internet access.

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#14

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 24, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

mostlysimilar wrote: post #8

__loam wrote: post #3

[flagged]

`browser.ml.enable` has remained `false` for me between updates.

[deleted]

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#15

Post by LetsGetTechnicl » Fri, Oct 24, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

dotcoma wrote: post #2

Disable AI, disable targeted ads... What's wrong with you, Firefox ?

In their defense, they're in a bit of a precarious financial situation. Most of their money comes from Google, who happens to also be their largest competitor.

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#16

Post by jherdman » Fri, Oct 24, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

hyghjiyhu wrote: post #10

I should figure out how to turn off ai in acrobat reader. It offers to summarize my sheet music every time I open it...

I'm curious to know what the AI does when it encounters sheet music. Does it do anything intelligible?

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#17

Post by cachius » Fri, Oct 24, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

Funny, the style sheet breaks the text on mobile and a inserts a hyphen so the setting name appears as

brow-ser.ml.enable

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#18

Post by porphyra » Fri, Oct 24, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

Mozilla could have had the no-nonsense, high performance browser backend that everyone uses to build their own browsers (like the recent glut of AI browsers), instead of everyone using Chromium/Blink. In the past, Gecko was really the go-to choice for this. They almost had a second shot with Servo. But they kinda really dropped the ball on the technical capability of the browser while continuing to be distracted by all sorts of random gimmicks like Pocket and then this. Sad!

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#19

Post by AmbroseBierce » Fri, Oct 24, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

__loam wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Reminds me of Call Of Duty, every major update they just reenable two or one multiplayer game modes for everyone.

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#20

Post by braebo » Fri, Oct 24, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

sdairs wrote: post #5

I've used Firefox for 15 years and I really don't want to use Chrome. Can Mozilla just, like, make a good browser?

Use Brave. It’s de-googled, privacy-centric chromium with built-in uBlock-style ad/tracker blocking. Best of both worlds!