This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
WE. DON'T. WANT. THIS.
Mozilla, for the love of god, stop cramming AI into the browser when the vast majority of your users just want a privacy-respecting browser that works.
I've said it before, and I've said it again: I will not donate any more money to the Mozilla foundation until they stop cramming AI into everything, and you should too.
They might be getting money from google that tells them what to do.
Nah, Google funds them so they can point at them and say they aren't a monopoly, directing what they do would ruin that.
Mozilla's perfectly capable of making dumb decisions on their own, they do that plenty
Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.
Come on, this isn't Reddit, at least skim the article before you start with the performative outrage.
It should be something that people can easily turn ON.
It is opt in, this article is click bait.
Directly from the horses mouth:
"In Firefox, you’ll never be locked into one ecosystem or have AI forced into your browsing experience. You decide when, how or whether to use it at all. You’ve already seen this approach in action through some of our latest features like the AI chatbot in the sidebar for desktop or Shake to Summarize on iOS.
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."
We'll just ignore the fact that the chat bot menu setting randomly appeared after an update. Very opt in. The only way to kill the task it sparks is to go into about:config and kill all the browser.ml.* options.
No one here cares what Firefox says because their actions have already hurt the trust in them.
Except I literally had to dig through the about: config settings to turn off AI in my browsing experience. So they are already lying
Nnnoooooo you dumb bastards
Yall saw Microsoft push stupid Copilot on everyone and fail miserably and said, "hold my beer!"
Bros, take the hint! No one wants AI bullshit. Firefox was the goto switch when Google Chrome was using 37 processes and 98% memory for one website... yall are fuckin up!
IT department at my job encourages everyone to use Copilot and try to implement it more... I don't even know WHY I'd do it in the first place
That directive came from them but they didn’t want to issue it. I guarentee you the were told by higher ups to say that.
Remember the way to disable all AI in Firefox.
about:config
browser.ml.enable -> false
I don't think anyone actually read the announcement, just the headline. Here was the new CEOs actual first point.
"First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it."
AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn ~~off~~ on. That's how it should be.
Can't wait for ladybird to arrive to leave all this current browser crap behind me.
They're going to use AI to identify and block ads for me, right? Or let me set a cookie preference and automatically apply that to every page I visit?
That would be rather useful things to have AI for IMHO.
Well no. They not gonna burn ai credits on that, they need it to identify your interests and sell you ads.
If you're going to add AI shit it should be something people can easily turn on. It should be off by default.
Not only the setting off, but any sort of behind the scenes stuff related to it disabled as well. No automatic updating, no background processes to "keep it ready, just in case". Do that when it's enabled.
First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.
That's a good idea to put first. Of course, like do no evil, priorities change, so we'll need to keep a close eye on this.
Second: our business model must align with trust. We will grow through transparent monetization that people recognize and value.
Transparent is good, but if he things he's going to add value to monetization, he's smoking crack. There's nothing we want from a browser that's not already provided by a plugin.
Third: Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.
Nobody wants that. We already had all we wanted from them in trusted software.
As long as there is a easy way to disable it. And clearly communicated what they are doing. I do not begrudge mozilla trying to remain competitive with mainstream.
It's very sad as I don't think there's a proper alternative in short term. In the end, I am afraid that I'll have to keep using Firefox because it's essentially the "lesser evil",
Very unfortunate development, which seems par for the course from Mozilla these days.
I'm jumping ship. Which browser would y'all recommend at this point? Preferably something I can get on android as well as linux.
LibreWolf is a great alternative on Linux. It’s Firefox with all the bs stripped out and out-of-the-box privacy settings turned on.
This is what I have used for the last few years (after being a Firefox user for almost 2 decades), and yeah we're probably safe for a little while, but it seems the writing is on the wall. The LibreWolf team can only do so much when the core browser is constantly being enshittified. I hoped this was a flash in the pan thing and LibreWolf would save us until Mozilla regained its senses, but it seems they've gone batshit.
I too will be keeping my eyes peeled for what to use next.
I'm hoping LibreWolf and Iron Fox hold out long enough for Ladybird to take off and I'll be switching
As long as it is open source, it doesn’t matter. Forks like Librewolf will disable it.
It does matter a bit.
Librewolf devs depend on firefox development. They just rip out the stupid bits. They're not prepared to maintain a hard fork. They could still decide to do it, but it would take more community involvement.
Waterfox. LibreWolf. Fennec.
Just use a fork; rawdogging Firefox is already a bit crazy.
I said it before but they are really excelling at alienating their users in (failed) attempts at attracting new ones.
It pains me to see, I don't want to use chromium, but there is a limit...
I'll consider using Mozilla once Anthony Enzor-DeMeo is fired or fucks off.
My decision has been rammed through in the exact same uncaring and unilateral way that Tony wants to ram AI down Mozilla users throats.
