06-21-2024 11:55 AM - last edited on 10-18-2024 02:19 PM by Jon
Hi folks,
In the next few days, we will start the Nightly experiment which provides easy access to AI services from the sidebar. This functionality is entirely optional, and it’s there to see if it’s a helpful addition to Firefox. It is not built into any core functionality and needs to be turned on by you to see it.
If you want to try the experiment, activate it via Nightly Settings > Firefox Labs (please see full instructions here).
We’d love to hear your feedback once you try out the feature, and we’re open to all your ideas and thoughts, whether it’s small tweaks to the current experience or big, creative suggestions that could boost your productivity and make accessing your favorite tools and services in Firefox even easier.
Thanks so much for helping us improve Firefox!
09-09-2024 11:24 AM - edited 09-10-2024 06:16 PM
Extremely disappointed to see Mozilla partnering with multiple anti-privacy, anti-user, and environmentally damaging companies to integrate tools and systems which reinforce a paradigm of manufactured, coerced consent to people's choices over whether and how their data is used. The values embedded in the operations of LLMs and other "generative AI," as presently construed and created, predominantly sit in direct opposition to everything Mozilla has been understood to work towards and hold as Good.
If this were a project about Mozilla working to building a better, more ethical, consent-focused, environmentally sustainable LLM or "GenAI" system, then I would support it without reservation; more than that, I would applaud it and point to it as a meaningful change in the status quo and a good path forward in the world of "AI." As it stands, this just reifies the worst tendencies of "AI" companies, casting them as "inevitable" or otherwise without alternative; Mozilla of all places should have the vision to resist these PR lines about "AI," and at least try to imagine a different way forward.
09-09-2024 11:23 AM
Absolutely not.
09-09-2024 11:25 AM
I will stop using, supporting, and recommending this browser if these changes to implement AI take place.
09-09-2024 11:27 AM
Don't even bother. If you do this I will seriously consider abandoning Firefox, and I've been a loyal user since I was old enough to operate a computer. Keep AI out of Firefox.
09-09-2024 11:28 AM
I frankly have zero interest in supporting or using these services, considering how much electricity, water and other basic utilities are consumed by the data centres needed to run them
09-09-2024 11:29 AM
Please do not do this. Most people don't know how bad AI is for the world from an ethical and environmental standpoint. And a lot of folks who know and keep on using it do so out of malice for the people they would normally rely on to do the work that AI tries to do.
Please stand against this. Do not implement ANY AI in FireFox. We've already seen research concluding that it frequently causes more work for people overall, and it frequently gets info or details completely wrong. It can be dangerous when looking up safety info, on top of many other issues.
Please, do not do this.
09-09-2024 11:31 AM
I really really really do not want AI integrated to the browser, I'm so tired of it being pushed down our throats, even when is not actually helpful nor convenient. I started using firefox because they seemed to actually care about their users, their data and their privacy, it's a shame to see it going down the same road as every other browser out there.
09-09-2024 11:31 AM
To once again voice the most common response to this:
Absolutely not.
This will be the feature that pushes me to stop using Firefox official builds entirely, and prevent me from supporting any other Mozilla products. I have no interest in supporting a company that is using generative AI in it's current forms, full stop.
09-09-2024 11:32 AM
AI has firmly shown itself time and again to be unreliable and consequently useless, please reconsider using time and resources towards this fool's errand.
09-09-2024 11:33 AM
Firefox is the last bastion for a safe and secure browser option. Implementing AI for the sake of keeping up with the current fads will irreparably damage Firefox users' trust in Mozilla. Chatbots and other AI systems are a slippery slope towards loss of internet privacy and user autonomy.
09-09-2024 11:34 AM
For the love of all that is good, don't add any generative AI.
Either you should know better about the privacy, copyright, or misinformation concerns, or you're willfully ignorant as a software developer at this point.
Either that or you heard the buzzword of the month and decided to just "add AI" without knowing anything about it.
In any case, please don't use any generative AI.
09-09-2024 11:35 AM
Firefox is the last bastion for a safe and secure browser option. Implementing AI for the sake of keeping up with the current fads will irreparably damage Firefox users' trust in Mozilla. Chatbots and other AI systems are a slippery slope towards loss of internet privacy and user autonomy.
09-09-2024 11:36 AM
This is such a bad idea... I'll have to find another browser if this goes through. I'm so sick of AI in places it really doesn't need to be.
09-09-2024 11:37 AM
No thanks
09-09-2024 11:31 AM
For the love of god, DO NOT DO THIS!
Enough with the mediocre machine being shoved in our collective faces!
09-09-2024 11:38 AM
No. If you only want comments from people who are willing to try an AI feature, your results will be inherently skewed.
09-09-2024 11:45 AM
Big, emphatic "NO" to this. I use Firefox over other browsers specifically because it's not bloated with features like AI, but if it starts doing that then I'll have to start using an alternative.
09-09-2024 11:49 AM
If Firefox is going to become yet another greedy, trend-chasing, "screw the users, we do what we want" browser, why are we even here? I appreciate that this "feature" is opt-in rather than opt-out, but I do not trust that it will stay that way. I don't trust anything related to AI, because modern AI is inherently exploitative. As someone who went to school for computer science in part because I wanted to learn about machine learning/AI, I am strongly against 90% of all AI, and 100% of generative AI. The fact that Mozilla would even consider working with such a wasteful and exploitative technology makes me lose a great amount of trust in the organization, and if it does get implemented, all of the remaining trust will evaporate.
There are some very narrow conditions where some forms of AI might be acceptable (some of the early cancer detection algorithms would qualify, for example). This isn't one of them.
I'll be honest, I don't know of very many browser alternatives that aren't chrome/chromium-based (I welcome replies with suggestions lol) but I will do my best to find one that doesn't use AI and drop Firefox like a hot rock if this continues.
09-09-2024 11:54 AM
NO. I dont want AI services.
09-09-2024 11:55 AM
Please don't, the whole reason the majority of people use firefox in the first place is because it actually respects their privacy and doesn't include bloated useless features like AI.
09-09-2024 11:54 AM
Please don't do this. We don't WANT this. So-called AI is trained on stolen data and the size of the models needed requires a massive amount of resources that are accelerating climate change. There is no moral way to engage with 'AI'of this kind. Please, please stop. The user base has not asked for this.
We use Firefox because we want a browser we can TRUST not to take our data against our will. This is the opposite of everything Forefox is meant to be. The markets are rejecting AI. Your consumers reject AI. This is an awful idea as well as an awful, awful thing to do.
09-09-2024 11:56 AM
Kindly make it extension only or don't add it at all. I switched to Firefox because I wanted to avoid the sort of invasive BS Microsoft and Google are pushing, and now you're turning around and doing the same thing? And it's all well and good to sit and say that you definitely promise it'll be totally private no data scraping at all no sir not ever, how long will that last? I don't want to have to turn off a baked in setting; Microsoft already keeps forcing me to do that over and over and over and over again. If people really want an AI feature, give them an extension to install and leave the rest of us out of this.
For ethical reasons, if this moves forward as a permanent change, I know I will certainly be moving to another option and encouraging everyone I know to do the same. (And I have seen earlier responses: please do not reply to me insisting it's private or it'll be turned off, I genuinely do not trust that anymore. Too many times I've seen that promise being made and then reneged in the end. The environmental impacts of generative AI as it currently exists far exceed anything, and this feels more like advertising than it does anything anyone wanted- no one asked you for this. Do better.)
09-09-2024 11:56 AM
stop
09-09-2024 11:59 AM
PLEASE no AI!!!! It is unhelpful and actually makes anything you're trying to do worse, it's destructive to the planet, it's anti-privacy, it's just awful in every possible respect. PLEASE don't follow this awful awful trend.
09-09-2024 12:02 PM
Remove this sh***. We do not want this and at least I will immediately uninstall Firefox and begin using a fork if anything related to AI appears because of an update.
09-09-2024 12:05 PM
jesus christ absolutely not
09-09-2024 12:05 PM
Completely agree with everybody in this thread, NO. I am not sure why the mozilla team thought something so invasive for users and bad for internet and world as a whole would fly with their userbase
09-09-2024 12:07 PM
Please no.
Thank you
09-09-2024 12:10 PM
No
09-09-2024 12:11 PM
What a waste of time and resources.
09-09-2024 12:12 PM
I'm sick of unimaginative tech companies shoving "AI" down our throats. None of that in Firefox, please. It's bad for the environment, bad for creators, and just bad quality.
09-09-2024 12:13 PM
I would not want this sort of feature being implemented in Firefox.
09-09-2024 12:15 PM
No AI please.
Optional add-ons made thoughtfully by other people? Great.
Predictive text program that wastes energy and spits out garbage? No.
AI can be used as a pattern-recognition tool in specific settings, like detecting cancer cells or mold growth. AI does not enhance my internet experience.
09-09-2024 12:17 PM
No. Please don’t ad Ai to Firefox. Ai is useless and is nothing more than a misinformation tool that has become the latest tech bandwagon for any and all companies to jump on despite users not wanting it and it adding nothing to their user experience other than frustration.
09-09-2024 12:18 PM
Absolutely not. I have huge privacy concerns about AI us in any app that I use as a creator and small business owner. Not to mention the gigantic environmental cost to running AI. Don’t need it, don’t want, don’t trust the results.
09-09-2024 12:20 PM
Please stop. This type of AI is unethical, bad for the environment, and a money-losing fad just like NFTs. It scrapes copyrighted content illegally, spreads misinformation because it's not intelligent enough to understand information online, it's just... bad. Not worth it. Do not force Firefox to have this. It will permanently destroy the reputation of Firefox.
09-09-2024 12:23 PM
Considering how absolutely incorrect many of the "ai" answers are, I can see absolutely no reason for this function. Just look at how bad chatgpt and all the others are at answering simple letter counting questions and spelling corrections and you can see the active harm these LLMs can have! That's not even getting into the stolen/coercively obtained data they're trained on, the amount of electricity they use in areas that are already struggling with power strain, the amount of water they waste, the amount of computer parts they take iff the market making cost for those parts skyrocket, and everything else that others have said regarding the ethics inherent in ALL LLMs.
Mozilla should not be giving legitimacy to ANY of these "ai" products that are anything but intelligent! People will be and are being hurt by the false information they get from chatGPT and other chatbots, including suggestions to mix dangerous chemicals or eat toxic foods! Children are using these for homework or class assignments and just getting completely wrong answers which hinders their education, maybe irreparably!
You are better than this, Mozilla. Prove it.
09-09-2024 12:23 PM
GenAI is slop. It's unclear to me why so many people are jumping on the genai train when it's proven itself to consistently hallucinate things, be trained on biased data sets, etc...
09-09-2024 12:21 PM
WE DO NOT WANT THIS. It is harmful, racist, resource intensive, and inhumane.
09-09-2024 12:24 PM
Please don't do this. User experience and satisfaction would tank.