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Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

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Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#391

Post by godelski »

rochav wrote: post #186
sigmar wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes. Firefox and Chrome already offer this. yes, both use machine learning methods to translate pages. You're already using AI and don't realize it.

Even if they didn't realize it, I don't believe they were arguing that firefox and chrome didn't/wouldn't use machine learning already, rather that they just thought the use cases you provided don't really sell the cost of having a full LLM integrated into every browser install.

  > the cost of having a full LLM integrated into every browser install
What's this even mean?

There's no fucking way there's going to be a "full LLM integrated into every browser." You really think they're going to drop in a 20GB-200GB model with every browser? Mind you, Llama-8B is over 15GB.

Nah. So far they are doing about 50MB per language translation that you ask for[0]. You have to explicitly install languages to translate.

There's neither "a full blown LLM" (whatever that means) nor forcing AI onto you. You still have to download the language packs, they are just offering an extension that more seamlessly integrates with the browser.

And we know what they're building too! Go look in the "Labs" tab and you'll see an opt-in for testing a semantic search of your history. That doesn't take an LLM to do, that takes a vector embedding model. What next? Semantic search in page? How terrible of a feature! (But seriously, can we get regex search?)

[0] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/06/neural-machine-translation...

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#392

Post by diputsmonro »

echelon wrote: post #360
tliltocatl wrote: post #355

I think people screaming "but AI is the future" doesn't recognize what the problem is. The problem is not AI. The problem is that Mozilla keeps jumping on fads instead of focusing on their browser core. There are a tons of "we bundled all the latest crap" Chrome forks out there. Nobody needs more those. Stop pushing bells and whistles. Give us more extensibility instead. Keep supporting v2 manifest and add more. Ther…

> people screaming "but AI is the future" I witnes far more people screaming against AI. The media started kicking this off in 2021, 2022. It blossomed into a fully distributed, organic, memetic device from there. It has a life of its own now. Children and young people are practically indoctrinated if you look at social media comments. I was invited to give lectures to several art schools about using Blender, Unreal…

I wonder why nobody wants to use my pretty theft machine? I mean, it steals all their work and spits out copies that are almost as good, and almost for free! Why aren't these artists stoked about not having to do art anymore?

Well, I guess it does use more energy than every existing data center, driving up costs for basic electronic components and thereby making every electronic device more expensive.

And I guess the results aren't quite as good, but if you squint and don't really care about art on a human level and just want to clap like a seal at the pretty pictures then it's enough.

And I guess economic forces will mean that some of them will lose their jobs when their bosses realize that they can get away with only needing half as many prompt artists.

But hey, at least we don't have to pay humans to make art anymore. How glorious that our Silicon Valley gods have delivered us from the hell of creating economic incentives for humans to express themselves to other humans.

Yeah, those screaming, "indoctrinated" artists are so impolite and crazy, aren't they? Don't they realize what we've done for them? We made the automatic art machine! They'll never get to make art again!

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#393

Post by m4rtink »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #382
echelon wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people screaming "but AI is the future" I witnes far more people screaming against AI. The media started kicking this off in 2021, 2022. It blossomed into a fully distributed, organic, memetic device from there. It has a life of its own now. Children and young people are practically indoctrinated if you look at social media comments. I was invited to give lectures to several art schools about using Blender, Unreal…

> I witnes far more people screaming against AI. If you shove it into people's faces, they will have knee jerk reaction and hate it. If the AI industry didn't desperately try to push it in every possible way in desperate bid to be profitable and it was just a thing that slowly gets better and is value added, not a nagging push, there would be far less of that. But companies like MS have idea of consent of average rap…

Add to that various hardware shortages caused by the AI mania or more examples of AI missuse and I wonder where we might end up eventually if people will get even angrier.

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#394

Post by pjc50 »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #90
gigel82 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to live in your world for a bit... I can't imagine any future where having AI in your browser is a net positive for any user. It sounds like an absolute dystopian privacy and security nightmare.

Why? Imagine you have an AI button. When you click it, the locally running LLM gets a copy of the web site in the context window, and you get to ask it a prompt, e.g. "summarize this". Imagine the browser asks you at some point, whether you want to hear about new features. The buttons offered to you are "FUCK OFF AND NEVER, EVER BOTHER ME AGAIN", "Please show me a summary once a month", "Show timely, non-modal notifi…

> The buttons offered to you are "FUCK OFF AND NEVER, EVER BOTHER ME AGAIN"

I've already hit that option before reading the other ones.

> "On search engine result pages and social media sites, use a local LLM to identify headlines, classify them as clickbait-or-not, and for clickbait headlines, automatically fetch the article in an incognito session, and add a small overlay with a non-clickbait version of the title"

Why would you bother fetching the clickbait at all? It's spam.

The main transformation I want out of a browser, the absolutely critical one, is the removal of advertising. I concede that AI might be decent at removing ads and all the overlay clutter that makes news sites unreadable; does anyone have the demo of "AI readability mode"? Crucially I do not want it changing any non-ad text found on the page.

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#395

Post by m4rtink »

samschooler wrote: post #23

I'm going to chime in here, I think 1. This is great and Mozilla is listening to it's core fans and 2. I want Firefox to be a competitive browser. Without AI enabled features + agent mode being first class citizens, this will be a non-starter in 2 years. I want my non-tech family members/friends to install Firefox not because I come over at Christmas, but because they want to. Because it's a browser that "just works.…

Yeah, that's like having a browser without without support for blockchain, semantic web or UML! No one would use it without these absolutely critical features!

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#396

Post by pjc50 »

wvenable wrote: post #335
entropy47 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know so many people who made that same argument, if you can call it that, about smartphones. Sure, but people also told me I'd be using crypto for everything now and (at least for me) it has faded into total obscurity. The biggest difference for me is that nobody (the companies making things, the companies I worked for...) had to jam smartphones down my throat. It made my life better so I went out of my way to us…

Any AI product I pay for is great. Any AI product I don't pay for is terrible.

> Any AI product I pay for is great. Any AI product I don't pay for is terrible.

This doesn't sound like the "free sample" model is working then? If I try the free version of product X and it's terrible, that will discourage me from ever trying the paid version.

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#397

Post by godelski »

brooke2k wrote: post #182
sigmar wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes. Firefox and Chrome already offer this. yes, both use machine learning methods to translate pages. You're already using AI and don't realize it.

"AI" as it's used nowadays is unfortunately usually a shorthand for LLM. When firefox talks about "AI features", I think most people interpret that as "LLM integration", not the page-translation feature that's been around for ages.

  > most people interpret that as "LLM integration", not the page-translation feature that's been around for ages.
Which seems to be the problem. People don't even realize they're being irrational, despite Mozilla being quite transparent about what they're doing. It's pretty clear.

I mean a Firefox download is 150MB, not 16GB...

Plus, we know what Firefox is looking to do. In their labs tab they let you opt into trying out semantic search of your history. So that's a vector embedding model, not an LLM.

Edit:

Okay, they have "Shake to summarize". But that's a shortcut to Apple Intelligence. Nothing shipped with the browser. Similarly I don't understand how the chatbot window is so controversial. I̶'̶m̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶r̶t̶c̶u̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶u̶x̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶i̶n̶d̶o̶w̶s̶,̶ ̶but are people really pressing on a mac or ctrl+alt+x on linux/windows? It's not a LLM shipped with the browser, it is just a window split ("shortcut") to literally one of the most popular websites on the internet right now (ChatGPT is literally the #5 most visited website and you all think AI is unpopular?!). Adding shortcuts isn't shoving AI down your throat. Are they shoving Wikipedia down your throat because you can do "!w hacker news"? Give me a break guys

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#398

Post by godelski »

r721 wrote: post #305
brooke2k wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"AI" as it's used nowadays is unfortunately usually a shorthand for LLM. When firefox talks about "AI features", I think most people interpret that as "LLM integration", not the page-translation feature that's been around for ages.

>Starting today, Google Translate uses advanced Gemini capabilities to better improve translations on phrases with more nuanced meanings like idioms, local expressions or slang. https://blog.google/products/search/gemini-capabilities-tran... [Dec 12, 2025]

Firefox is local

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#399

Post by m4rtink »

pera wrote: post #385
Spacecosmonaut wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI tools are here to stay. They will start to creep into everything, everywhere, all the time. Either you recognize the moment at which it becomes a significant disadvantage not to use them (I agree that moment is not now), or get left behind.

Many thing are "here to stay", should Mozilla also implement a "share with TikTok" functionality into their browser? > or get left behind. Last time I heard this phrase it was about VR, and before that it was NFTs. I wished the tech community wasn't so susceptible to FOMO sentiments.

Non corporate VR is actually doing some interesting things - but yeah, what Meta did with it was pure garbage.

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#400

Post by tgv »

samschooler wrote: post #23

I'm going to chime in here, I think 1. This is great and Mozilla is listening to it's core fans and 2. I want Firefox to be a competitive browser. Without AI enabled features + agent mode being first class citizens, this will be a non-starter in 2 years. I want my non-tech family members/friends to install Firefox not because I come over at Christmas, but because they want to. Because it's a browser that "just works.…

Lots of disagreement, but from necessity I (sort of) agree. Firefox foremost needs users. If it takes AI features to get them, so be it. However, Firefox cannot afford to lose its loyal user base, so they have to be optional.
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