Share your feedback on the AI services experiment in Nightly

[asafko]

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!

[lilliana]

FEEDBACK ON AI SERVICES EXPERIMENT IN FIREFOX NIGHTLY

Thank you for introducing this experimental feature and seeking user feedback. I'm excited about the potential of AI services integration in Firefox and wanted to share my positive experiences and thoughts.

Benefits I've Experienced

• Time-saving: The AI services have significantly reduced the time I spend on tasks like summarizing web content and simplifying complex language.
• Enhanced Learning: The ability to quiz myself on webpage content has improved my comprehension and retention of information.
• Improved Productivity: Having AI assistance readily available in the sidebar streamlines my workflow without the need to switch between different applications or tabs.

Appreciation for the Implementation Approach

I particularly appreciate how Mozilla has approached this feature:

1. Opt-in Nature: The fact that this functionality is entirely optional and needs to be manually activated shows respect for users who may have concerns about AI integration.
2. Separation from Core Functionality: By keeping AI services separate from Firefox's core features, you've maintained the browser's integrity while still offering advanced capabilities to those who want them.
3. Experimental Stage: Starting with a nightly experiment allows for valuable user feedback and iterative improvement before a wider release.

Suggestions for Consideration

While I'm already finding the feature useful, here are a few ideas that could potentially enhance the experience:

1. Core Functionality/Opt-in: Keep it as it currently is—many who raise concerns about AI often overlook that they can simply opt out.
2. Privacy Controls: Implement granular privacy settings for users who want to use the feature but have specific data concerns.
3. Integration with Firefox Sync: Enable syncing of AI-related settings and preferences across devices for a consistent experience.

Closing Thoughts

I believe this experiment represents a forward-thinking approach to browser functionality. By offering AI capabilities as an optional feature, Firefox is catering to diverse user needs while respecting individual preferences. This balance is crucial in today's digital landscape.

I encourage Mozilla to continue developing and refining this feature based on user feedback. It has the potential to significantly enhance the browsing experience for many users without compromising Firefox's core values of privacy and user control.

Thank you for your commitment to innovation and user-centric design. I look forward to seeing how this feature evolves.

[miclgael1]

You sound like a robot

[RattyTatTat]

Thats because they probably generated this whole thing with chatgpt

[lilliana]

how’d u figure that out?? lol, i used it to help make sure there’s no errors n stuff. it’s not like I just told it to spit out a random review and just posted without reading lol, I spent time going over it and putting in my own thoughts on the feature and why i think it’s cool. but it wouldn’t let me post it in impact font, all caps, with light yellow text on a white background so i had to waste time going back to fix that multiple times, but yeh

in short, well done on spotting the obvious, but that doesn’t really say anything about the content of my review

[miclgael1]

No one will read your review because it doesn't look human. Your reply looks human. I read that. 🙂

[lilliana]

That's ok the feedback was specifically for Mozilla there's not much for you to gain by reading it

edit: that one u said looks human was written by A I


now that is scary 👻

[lackey]

By its nature, AI is incapable of being deceptive (or honest) because it cannot think or reason. But because it is built to respond in a way that will please the people that use it, it can often come off as deceptive. 

But you, however... I don't understand why you are taking pleasure in adopting the persona of deception, as if you are proving something other than the worthlessness of engaging in something generated by a chatbot.

[DysProg]

And here is chat-gpt speaking in their own defense.

[Likemea]

dystopian

[MikeCerm]

Only interested in this if it can connect to local LLMs, Ollama, etc.. I do understand why so many people are so vocally opposed to this completely optional feature. Those people are short-sighted, for sure, but if the default option here was "run your own local LLM completely privately, nothing goes to the cloud ever," and then also offered an option to connect to the corporate LLMs in the cloud for the people who want it, I think the pushback would be lessened. Brave recently introduced the ability to connect to your own self-hosted LLM, and I have found that useful.

[genuinelywish]

It's only "completely optional" until it isn't.

[linus_at]

It would be great to be able to include services of your choice, not just those by default included in Firefox. For instance, I would love to use Perplexity in the sidebar.

[PlsNo]

Please don't. I'd rather not have any AI functionality in Firefox.

[genuinelywish]

Jesus, I come here to complain about the ugly tab search button and see this crap? I genuinely might have to switch to a fork of Firefox.

[nozilla]

Just **bleep**ing don't, nobody asked for this, nobody needs this, you're assholes.

[emmaharris]

I would rather this is an opt in service that I can purposefully enable or disable in the settings. I do not approve of AI and how it harvests my personal search, and browsing history to build a profile of me. I also do not approve the use of AI as it gets in the way of me and I like to write my responses myself.

[thatMan11111]

Can you maybe just add a button for to call the chatbot because I need to highlight something first and choose summary even when I just want to call the chatbot.

[datcu-octavian]

Please add a keyboard shortcut. Useful for those who want to see the sidebar only when needed.

[fortiter]

I met two problems:

1. The icon of AI occupies the place owned to my translator's. So I could not use it conveniently. It's really annoying.

2. Is there a way to alternate more online AI models and my local models, instead of the limited choices?

[Taprooted]

Absolutely not. I moved to Firefox because it's not like the other mainstream browsers. We don't need this.

[StarMoss]

I've been a longtime user of Firefox, and I am incredibly disappointed  to see Mozilla adding AI to its browser. My loyalty to Firefox was born from the privacy features and what seemed to me a sensible reluctance to follow along with all the ill-conceived new features tech companies are spitting out these days.

Due to the incredible, negative environmental impact AI has, the ethically questionable datasets most AI are trained on, and the fact that genAI just straight up sucks from a quality standpoint of its output, I am very against Mozilla making this a permanent feature of Firefox.

[AndyDroid10X]

I really don't get all of that people. I guess people who are good with AI like me just use AI features happily, while others could just don't turn those features on, but instead they're commenting around that Firefox is not about AI, AI is bad, they collect their data etc. While I understand the concerns about privacy, I feel OK with that features as long as they're not turned on by default or work as a part of core features like in windows.

I love Orbit and I love that side panel, it's just useful.

[tuxayo]

NO. The actual software running is not libre.
Even if the training algorithm would be libre. The training data isn't.
Even if the training data would be libre. It's impossible to train with reasonable hardware for most collectives of people. We basically invented a programming paradigm that is impossible to compile for almost anyone.
And most AI usage is impossible to host with reasonable resources.

What happened to Principle 7 of The Mozilla Manifesto? https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

Most AI usage can't have the concrete benefits of libre software: massively lowering the dependence on a vendor. Whether it's about disagreement on choices or availability on the long term.

Also Principle 6. As of now, most AI usage can only end of in more centralization.

There can be compromises on these principles if having a very very strong reason. Like for translations, automated subtitles, text to speech, because it's accessibility and there are immense benefits there.

[MikeCerm]

There are lots of free/libre LLMs and implementations like ollama. AI is going to happen, whether you want it or not, and if companies like Mozilla don't push for free and open-source options, then the only implementations that matter will be the proprietary ones.

As for the training data, I think there needs to be a reckoning. I'm kind of a fair-use absolutist, so I don't really where the data comes from, and I want it to come from everywhere. I believe that public libraries infringe on copyright, and are a public good because everyone deserves to have access to information. I don't believe that a writer like Stephen King is harmed if people read all of his stories and then attempt to write their own original stories based on the love of what they have read. I also don't see the difference in allowing a person to build a machine capable of reading those stories and attempting to generate new stories by incorporating new and original ideas, i.e., "prompts."

It used to require a skilled artisan to make clothing. Then looms were invented, along with other machines that make clothing so cheap that almost anyone can afford to have it. I think that's a good thing. I mean, it's not great that there is industrial waste that occurs in the process and fast fashion is not great, but I don't think we should return to a time when most people couldn't afford clothing.

AI is going to automate things that previously had to be done by hand, with massive time investments. That is all. It's still going to require skilled people to use it to create things of value. But the tools should be available to everyone, and Mozilla should help make them available as part of their mission for a free and open web.

[onionella]

In most countries public libraries pay royalties for authors per every loan. I do not understand how that could be copyright infringement...

You can be a fair-use absolutist if you want but that does not change the fact that the training data used in those "free/libre LLMs" you linked unconsensually contains copyrighted content and that by definition makes it not free and libre and open source.

[MikeCerm]

I don't know how it works in most countries, but in America you can lend a physical book for free. Ebooks are bound by different terms, but physical books have no such licensing terms, the "first-sale doctrine" exists, so there are no restrictions on what a person might do with a physical book, other than make unauthorized copies, and there are even fair-use exceptions to that, e.g., criticism, news reporting, teaching, education, scholarly research, etc.

With fair use, there are several factors that considered. In the case of these free and/or libre LLMs, their transformational nature, inherently non-commercial, and have their own academic value that outweighs the copyright concerns. The same may not be true of commercial LLMs. 

I also don't think that lot of "terms of services" licenses apply the way that copyright holders think they should. I've visited a lot of websites in my life, and with few exceptions (pay-walled websites), I've never agreed to any terms of service. Do websites publish their terms of service somewhere and claim "all rights reserved"? Maybe, but if you can get to the content without reading or agreeing those terms, then I don't see how they matter. When you broadcast your thoughts out in to the world, they're out there, and they're going to be consumed and used in ways that you cannot control.

[d-k]

Please don't. I think it's a fad - not helpful at best, counterproductive at worst, and I think it's a waste of resources to implement it in general.

[_n0stalg1c1]

As we learned (or did we??) from the nuclear bomb building, "Just because we can, doesn't mean we should."

As our mothers always said, “If all of your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?”.  She said this hoping we could think critically for ourselves, to weigh the dangers and be cautious and not jump head-strong just to not miss out.

[johnnyasantoss]

Can we have an option to add a local website for local LLM inference like webui+ollama?

[Tiaxy]

Could you not, please? It literally isn't needed or helpfull in the slightest for majority of users and is just a waste of space and something that mentioned majority didn't ask for to be forced onto them, including me, which with so many companies doing the exact same thing, is just tiring and disapointing to see from you aswell.

It's just counterproductive and waste of rescources.

[jjmon]

This feature is great as long as it's possible to use a local model for privacy reasons.

It would be great if you can provide a guide on how to setup AI chatbot using a local model thru Ollama or LM Studio. I tried to use Ollama and the only thing it shows is "Ollama is running" in the chatbot panel.

Looking forward more features that work on local models.

[hazing3991]

It would be nice to have DuckDuckGo AI (duck.ai) included. It provides anonymous access to the models and does not take logs itself.

[Zoutpeper]

This literally goes against every reason I have to use Firefox.
Almost every single "AI" on the market is a nightmare of false information and hallucinations. Neither of which I need to BROWSE the web. Firefox is a webBROWSER. If you want to waste money on dumb **bleep**: make a side-project. And it will be a waste of money, all any of the current models have succeeded in is; increasing the amount of spammy websites, proliferating false information and making most search engines about 85% worse (whilst also regurgitating more misinformation).

[wldhg]

If you want to add AI, please make it an extension instead. Do not add it as a built-in feature.

[Mun]

Please stop. AI is a parasite in the modern internet and all you'll be doing to yourselves is make your users hate you. We have ublock, we will block any and all AI buttons you throw our way with it.

Just stop.

[0x4261756D]

I really dislike this "feature", it is another instance of Mozilla misevaluating what their target audience and unique selling point is. Most users use Firefox because it *does not* do tracking stuff, values their privacy and is a counterweight against Google. I hope the flood of negativity in this thread as well as in other similar ones is a wake-up call to focus on what makes Firefox attractive instead of following bad trends in an attempt to fish back users that left for those trends.

[epracigam]

The reason why I use firefox in the first place is to avoid ai, and I am sure many others are doing the same. I am frankly tired of seeing it being incorporated in every service that does not need it in the first place. This will probably turn away a lot of potential new users too, it's not really a good move if you want to make Firefox stand out from other web browsers.

[freydaru]

The addition of AI, particularly ones that cannot properly or ethically source where their data training has come from, will actively deter me from using Mozilla products or supporting the team in future, including my current subscription to the Mozilla VPN. I will move to alternatives. Incredibly disappointing.

[darthwonka]

Can you add configuration options for local AI instances like Ollama and others?

[dareksmarek]

DO. NOT. DO THIS. I don't want to sound rude or agressive, but I don't believe you don't know that ai is highly harmful to the environment, and that people who develop it steal all the sources. Can't you at least do not contribute to ruining everyone's right to use the internet safely, the fact that this function was added just shows that firefox's slogans about privacy are worth putting them among trash. Nobody needs any ai functions, it doesn't have anything new, it's quality is horrifying, and the harm done by it is gigantic. Please stop doing this.