topic Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool in Discussions

Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

sarath — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 19:57:37 GMT

Hi folks,

We’ve got something exciting to share first with our community! Introducing our beta version of Orbit by Mozilla, now available as a Firefox add-on. This is a new AI tool to help summarize emails, docs, articles, and even video transcripts.

Designed to boost productivity, Orbit provides concise summaries right in your browser. Whether you’re wading through long emails, dense documents, or informative videos, Orbit helps you get to the heart of the content quickly.

Features include:

Quick Summarization: Get summaries of what you’re reading or watching across sites like Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, and more.
User-Friendly: It’s simple to use – just add it to your browser and you’re good to go.
Interactive Q&A: Ask questions about page content and quickly find specific information.
Customizable Summaries: Choose your preferred summary length and format.
No AI Training: Unlike other services, Orbit’s AI does not train on your data, keeping your information private.

We invite you to check it out and download Orbit. We’d love to hear your feedback once you try out Orbit, and we’re open to all your ideas and thoughts.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

singhh9596 — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 17:12:57 GMT

Cool! Do you have an ETA for when it will be available on mobile browsers?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

sarath — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 17:20:09 GMT

Thank ya! No ETA just yet. We're focused on improving the desktop usability and stability at this time, but if we keep hearing more feedback for mobile support we can add that to the top of our queue.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

yoasif — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 18:13:43 GMT

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

sarath — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 19:03:56 GMT

In it's beta stage, Orbit is currently not open-source.

This doesn't mean it will remain this way forever. If orbit gains traction and we have the resources and funding to support an Open-Source project, I'm sure things could change. We are currently a small team of folks working on this part time and supporting an open-source project is not always a trivial amount of work.

Unrelated, but potentially interesting. When we chose Mistral's 7B model for the beta, that model was considered Open Source, but as of earlier this month it is no longer considered open-source as per the OSI definition.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

DonutRush — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 21:23:18 GMT

Mozilla should not be in the business of having Firefox drain a lake to misunderstand a webpage for me. You aren't making the web better.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

yoasif — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 21:42:25 GMT

Was the extension acquired as part of another project or product? Otherwise, I'm not sure I understand why the team size would have bearing on whether the software is open source.

Is the extension (not the serverside components) under license to another vendor?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Eeeee — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 06:32:11 GMT

I've tried Orbit a little bit, and there's a small problem: when I type Chinese, I usually type the pronunciation, and then select the Chinese character that corresponds to the pronunciation, and I have to press the Enter key to select the Chinese character I want, and then the conversation is sent before I can finish typing.
I hope that when I type Chinese, pressing Enter will not send the dialog immediately.

Also, when can we localize Orbit?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Vinnl — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 11:32:43 GMT

For more context to yoasif's remark, open source doesn't necessarily need to mean actively working with outside contributors, or making it easy to run by others. Openness is a spectrum, and it runs from a bare minimum of making the source code publicly available and with an open source licence attached - for example, the Mozilla Public Licence.

Assuming Orbit is also developed on GitHub, even just making the repository publicly readable, disabling issues and pull requests, and adding a LICENSE file with the contents of the MPL seems like a baseline that should at least be achievable, and potentially even less work than having to set up the infrastructure to enable limited access, particularly at an organisation like Mozilla.

(Consider this well-meaning advice, not a demand. Mozilla Monitor and Firefox Relay are open source, and it doesn't really cost us any effort, and occasionally has saved us some. They are not easy to run independently.)

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

wutongtaiwan — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 17:03:56 GMT

I want Chinese, add Chinese in this plugin as soon as possible

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

sarath — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:02:53 GMT

Thank you for the feedback! We're definitely keeping our eyes and ears open for suggestions for next languages we can support and thanks for clearly pointing out the issue we have with the "Enter" key. We'll definitely try to get that addressed for the next release.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

sarath — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:03:53 GMT

Thank you for your feedback. We're definitely keeping in mind the next languages we're hoping to support and Chinese is one that we'd love to add.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:26:15 GMT

Very good decision to move the AI/Chatbot module into an addon!

This gives me hope that the same can and will be done with other modules, like Pocket?

ref. https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/slim-down-firefox-remove-pocket-and-have-it-as-a-pre-installed/idi-p/247

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 18:37:21 GMT

It's a browser addon, just disable or remove it if you dont want it

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

lackey — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:43:37 GMT

I have several concerns about this tool, mostly centered around the ethics of AI and the way Mozilla is devoting so much time and money to features people do not appear to want. I hope the previous AI thread is addressed, as this comment eloquently sums up my thoughts.

But for Orbit specifically:

Why is FakeSpot listed on the homepage for Orbit?
Is the FakeSpot privacy policy, which allows Mozilla to sell private data to advertisers, in effect for Orbit?
Now that Mozilla has created an extension, will they remove the much-criticized Labs AI feature from Firefox and relegate its functionality to a similar feature?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:45:43 GMT

I just checked out the options and it looks nice, but i am kind of missing the function to select custom LLM backends. (like locally hosted ones)

Am i right in assuming that this will be added in the future?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Juraj — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:46:10 GMT

I'm a bit worried about performance, seeing the 189KB "content.js" being executed on each page I visit...

I would rather use it from the popup window, which is currently pretty empty. Or having it executed on the current page only after clicking the toolbar icon.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:52:26 GMT

Distancing the UI of the Chatbot a bit more form the website content might also be a smart move. Either the popup or a seperate sidebar (on the right) might be a good place. That would fix possible performance issue also.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

sarath — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 19:12:45 GMT

Thank you for the kind feedback! I've always been a fan of extensions for that reason. I will definitely share this feedback with the Pocket PM : )

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Yump — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 19:47:57 GMT

How are tags applied to posts? This is tagged "Say No To AI", which seems like a phrase associated with AI derangement syndrome, rather than what someone working on an AI tool would choose. I therefore assumed hostile tagging was possible and intended to apply "proprietary software", but I can't find it in the UI.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Jon — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 20:02:37 GMT

Thanks for the heads up - tags should only be applied by the OP as well as admin (for organization purposes and linking to existing bugzilla tickets).

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

sarath — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 20:07:11 GMT

Great Question!

There are few different approaches being proposed within Mozilla around this very topic. I'm unfortunately not the best at answering the holistic view, but I can offer a bit of insight into our process at least.

With Orbit we decided to take the approach of building an AI based tool that was focused on the simple online tasks that non-power users of AI might appreciate. (I don't think we'll be taking any users away from the Chat GPT's of the world.) However we wanted to provide this service while preserving the user's privacy.

However, we have a few potential paths to follow depending on the feedback we receive. Running a truly local LLM is one that we're researching at the moment. So far the feedback have not been loud enough for it, but we're keeping an ear out : )

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

sarath — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 20:08:25 GMT

Appreciate the call out here. I'll be sharing this with the engineering and UX teams to consider.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

sarath — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 20:09:42 GMT

@Jon I was wondering the same thing! As the admin/moderator could you provide some context around this?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

lackey — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 21:52:18 GMT

Mozilla requested input from everyone, not just people who agree with them.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Octuris — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 22:04:31 GMT

This is pretty neat! Is there a place where we can submit ideas or feedback?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

DonutRush — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 01:22:17 GMT

Mozilla should not be wasting money and developer time on Lying Autocomplete. They are already stretched impossibly thin, this is them not using limited resources wisely.

You're right, I don't have to install any add-on. But this is Mozilla diverting resources that are better spent elsewhere to instead chase a silly fad that's contributing to the boiling of the planet.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

techfox — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 10:30:11 GMT

No, thanks.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

flaqueman — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 13:34:28 GMT

Please Mozilla! Stop wasting resources on AI fad only a handful of user want. There are plenty of tools available already, we don't need yet another power-hungry money-burning hallucinogenic "feature".

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Blisterexe — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 14:47:55 GMT

Quick question, does the ai model for this run locally?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Blisterexe — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 14:49:07 GMT

How do you know only a handful of users want it? Have you run any studies?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

sarath — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 14:57:38 GMT

For the current beta, it is not running locally. However, it is an option our team is considering based on the feedback we're receiving.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

sarath — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 15:00:01 GMT

We'd love some feedback. If you'd like to submit your feedback anonymously, we have a "Get in Touch" function in the Settings that will send it over to our product team.

Or if it's easier for you, you can submit feedback via orbit-feedback@mozilla.com

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

flaqueman — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 15:16:03 GMT

No, indeed. I'm just guessing based on the amount of hate towards AI I'm witnessing everyday. But does Mozilla have numbers about how many people actually want this feature? I would love to see those numbers

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

malogan — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 21:15:24 GMT

I would have assumed after the firehose of negative feedback you have already received that Mozilla would have reversed course on this, but if you guys are really determined to dig your heels in on this then I'm moving to a different browser and cancelling my recurring donation to the mozilla foundation. I'm not giving money if it's going to be used chasing AI trends and I'm not using a browser that's actively implementing the kind of features I refuse to use chrome for having. You guys are fumbling the bag HARD right now.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

wutongtaiwan — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 09:23:09 GMT

Hasn't Mozilla changed? Mozilla is going to add AI in the form of extensions, you don't have to download it, but someone really needs to use AI, you can't stop it, you can use AI, but you shouldn't stop AI

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Octuris — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 21:56:25 GMT

Thanks! I sent an email with some ideas 🙂

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

doodlemancy — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 03:40:43 GMT

Can you guys try reading the room? Or reading anything that isn't ChatGPT output? This is so pathetic. Seriously just sad that you're wasting time and resources on this scammy garbage. I guess I'm not donating to Mozilla or paying for Mozilla VPN anymore.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

doodlemancy — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 03:39:02 GMT

someone must have offered them a LOT of money to hawk this garbage, more than they're afraid of losing in user support, and i don't think it's going to work out for them in the end lol

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

BlazeHedgehog — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 15:32:40 GMT

So you had a thread asking about feedback for an AI service in Firefox, and it garnered more than 3000 replies. Unfortunately, the Mozilla forums are also beholden to the gimmick of endless scrolling instead of the much smarter paginated view (for a forum especially), so it's actually harder than you'd think to look at all 3000+ replies.

But I decided to take at least a snapshot of who was for/against adding any AI features to Firefox at all, and my criteria was largely single replies to the original post, not factoring replies to replies.

I looked at 688 single replies, and out of those 688 single replies, 655 (95%) were a strong and clear "No" to any AI being added to Firefox in any capacity, while 33 (5%) were positive or at least neutral to its inclusion.

It really feels like you already made up your mind about including AI features in Firefox and the idea of letting users share their feedback was mostly performative, given you ignored pretty much everyone. The idea that this is an add-on you can either choose to install or ignore is moot; it's a defense against the overwhelming majority that told you not to do this and an excuse to do it anyway.

Who are you really serving here? Because it's not your userbase, that's for sure.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

doodlemancy — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 19:15:35 GMT

yes. chiming in to say i also watched this thread closely. a lot of people responded with a lot of well-reasoned feedback. they linked sources and listed clear, provable reasons that they don't want AI features in Firefox. it was not just an unthinking reactionary response to the tech buzzword of the moment-- although "AI" is such a sham in general that no is a perfectly fine place to both start and stop.

the overwhelming majority of the comments in that thread were negative on AI. one of the rebuttals i saw was "well, some popular anti-AI people posted about this elsewhere so the feedback is skewed that direction" and like... okay, but that's still genuine feedback wherever it came from-- people heard Firefox was implementing AI garbage and they went to the trouble to show up, sign in or make an account, and tell Mozilla, in no uncertain terms, that that they didn't want "AI" anywhere near Firefox. the notion that this was an "inorganic" response and thus worthy of dismissal is, frankly, hilarious coming from the people who think that have successfully fooled themselves into thinking predictive text is intelligent. also: consumers are actively turned off by AI.

the staff stopped responding, but early responses from staff were in a tone of like... "ok, we're still doing this though-- how can i convince you to be less mad about it?" from the pro-AI side, i saw basically no attempt to address anyone's concerns, besides "trust me bro" on the privacy side and "well if you don't like it, you don't have to use it", which misses the point of the outcry entirely.

i'd like to bring up again that Mozilla stopped accepting bitcoin donations a few years ago over environmental concerns, back when NFTs were the hot new scam bandwagon, and they haven't even quietly reversed course on that yet.

AI presents not only environmental concerns, but serious ethical and privacy concerns. this has been brought up over and over. Orbit runs off mistral 7b, who won't disclose where their data comes from, meaning: it's probably unethically scraped just like everyone else's and they don't want to admit it. if you cannot tell me where the data to train the AI came from, you have no grounds to claim that it was trained ethically. so what's going on here? why is Mozilla not being ethically consistent here? what convinced you guys to go in on this garbage?

by the way: AI can't even summarize text correctly. even this "innocuous" and seemingly helpful feature that Orbit is supposedly going to do is a sham. i'm sorry, but in order to obtain information from text, you do, in fact, just have to read it. i have severe ADHD and i understand that this is a struggle. but you have to read, or at least have a trusted human summarize it for you. "AI" is literally making more work for you because you have to fact-check it anyway! would you rather read something for 20 minutes and have all the correct info the first time, or read something for 2 minutes and then repeatedly have to go back and unlearn false facts/fix mistakes you've made because Microsoft Sam fed you a bunch of misinformation? a stitch in time saves nine. ask chatGPT to explain that one to you, i guess.

and for god's sake, paginate long threads in your forum, it's a mess.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

EcoHound — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 21:19:25 GMT

Are you people that dense? That other AI thread has hundreds of individual comments outright saying NO. Myself included

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Gabi — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 15:33:26 GMT

Hallo malogan 😀 from Germany, I don't agree with your comment! You have spoken "very honest" and "too hard" in my opinion, because the Moz. Employees, Admins + developpers do a very good job in my opionion!

It is a difficult time - all over the world and finding constructive solutions should be the main aim. I am a completly new member, from Germany and I use Firefox from the beginning - 2002! It is the same in Germany and Europe. Everything depends on market share. In Germany 13 percent of the users use the Firefox Browser (as it is Gecko engine and has excellent data securities and transparancy)!
Don t forget this.

The future is (unfortunately) AI and really believe me, I reject it also - as many people on the globe.
But, rejecting it completly is not the solution, because then, there is REALLY NO ALTERNATIVE where transparancy is given. Therefore:
1.) Should somebody d' ont need an (ai) add on, the possibility must be given to remove it.
2.) Should somebody would like to have more data secure - I mean an alternative to i.e. chatgpt
or Copilot- then it would be given with "Orbit" or whatever.
I think, it is important to find solutions, how the Firefox Browser comes back " to its roots in 2002" (with settings....which can be done by the users) and at the same time goes with the time - finding data secure alternatives - perhaps with add ons and/or with strong partnerships (companies) in order to earn more money (developpers are not for free).
In addition , I think Mozilla is under great pressure - particularly in the US - to be a good alternative to the Global players like Microsoft-Open AI and Google, which definitely have much more money.

So, MALOGAN - think about it and perhaps you have good ideas for this problem? Then let us know as community! Everybody would appreciate it. Thks.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Gabi — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 16:07:34 GMT

Hi everybody,
Summarized: Everybody is disappointed and angry about the AI-Extensions - and writes endless text.😲

But nobody considered about a reason ? and nobody has constructive Ideas to solve it for the worldwide community.

I am from Europe- Germany, I am really shocked about this and a better cooperation and understanding of economical reasons and pressure (through the global players) to the non-profit organization Mozilla within this community would be appreciated.

ACTS AND FIND Solutions.
In German we say: nicht quake - maake...! this is a joke

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

wutongtaiwan — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 08:44:02 GMT

Let's make an extension of nightly's AI function, don't build it into Firefox, it's too loud to oppose it. After the extension is made, it is placed in the "Recommended Extensions" section to facilitate users to install the extension

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

technoxenoholic — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 21:02:48 GMT

mozilla SHOULD NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES include generative ai as a base firefox feature. moving it into an optional addon instead IS a step up (you are removing it from the browser's base features, aren't you? you had better be). the fact that you promise not to train your ai on our data is also, obviously, a step up from most similar services. (assuming you actually mean it, that is.)

however, mozilla should also not be wasting time and resources on building a generative ai addon. there are, unfortunately, PLENTY of developers who can and will make a hundred generative ai addons themselves regardless of what firefox includes. stick to vetting those addons for whether or not they are upholding firefox's privacy standards (which are becoming very questionable, frankly, in the face of this insistence on endorsing generative ai), and don't expend the dev time on making your own.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Thullin — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 03:15:22 GMT

Neat but please don't make it mandatory like you just did with the list all tabs feature in the latest update.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

AndyDroid10X — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 05:02:33 GMT

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.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

AndyDroid10X — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 05:07:20 GMT

Don't you guys think that people who use AI features and find them useful just use them and don't share their outrage because everything is alright?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

tuxayo — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 06:01:19 GMT

The extension doesn't matter, 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 it's quite hard 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.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Erwan — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 08:58:55 GMT

I haven't tried Orbit, but all my interactions with an AI on the internet (help service, support chatbot, etc.) ended with: "how do I talk to a real human?"

Needless to say, AI chats irritate me to no end.

Question 1: How is Orbit hosted? what are the energy and cooling costs? How much physical space does it take up?

Question 2: Being a member of an NGO with a lot of pressure from the State or other large structures, can I be sure that AI will not be a good way to leak my data?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Erwan — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 09:39:06 GMT

I still wanted to test...

I uninstall it immediately.

He doesn't even bother to answer me in my language, I'm not going to spend an hour translating his answers each time.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Uberprutser — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 18:51:18 GMT

I'm not the biggest fan of the whole "ai" fad, but I am giving Orbit a try 🙂

Some feedback:
I'm using a low end laptop, and Orbit feels a bit slow.
I would like to move Orbit to the left, so it no longer overlaps with the vertical scroll bar.
I'm using a screen reader extension, and parsing an Orbit reply to the screen reader could be better.

Orbit a nice gimmick, certainly no IA. But I prefer this above having to login to OpenAI 🙂

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

hazing3991 — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 22:08:57 GMT

It would be less distracting to have it as a browser button in the toolbar, rather than a floating button that covers the web pages.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Zoutpeper — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 23:33:58 GMT

Instead of investing in a **bleep**ty machine learning algorithm you could also invest in making your product better. Adding "AI" (which is not AI) does not make your product better, it makes it worse.
This is neither exciting nor well thought out.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Carolly — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:50:07 GMT

Painfully obvious at this point that Mozilla sold out, because they have refused for months now to address any negative feedback about AI.

I don't really have anything to add because it's really clear you're not listening to your (now former) users. Just sucks. I switched to Firefox to get away from this garbage and now I've had to find an even more niche browser - and that's incredibly difficult when they're almost all built on the big browser frameworks.

Shame on you.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Entropic_Decay — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 10:07:05 GMT

Piss off with this garbage. I'm moving to a fork as soon as I can. You've had your chance to backpedal.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

NightmareSwag — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 21:09:20 GMT

Get that **bleep** outta here, most of us use Firefox to avoid trash like this.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

November — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 02:38:41 GMT

So you're all only pretending to listen when you make these "feedback" posts? I know you didn't miss the overwhelming negativity on your last AI post.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

PirosThe3rd — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 00:35:12 GMT

This is genuinely embarrassing. After a record-setting number of negative replies on AI in your feedback forum, y'all are still not seeing that this will cost you significant money and reputation as a product and corporation? Did any of your staff even read them? If not, what was the point of asking for feedback?

The replies in that feedback thread were, for the most part, not reactionary. I read at least half the pages myself. We did our best to be polite and explain thoroughly why AI is not an ethical investment for the future and why you will lose business if you did this.

Your continuance to ignore us is clear. Firefox is no longer a browser for the people like it started as, it's for the corporations just like Chrome and Edge. Incredible job.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

PirosThe3rd — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 00:37:01 GMT

Please check if it's allowed to say before replying, of course, but could you recommend alternatives to Firefox? I want to leave now too.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

PirosThe3rd — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 00:39:35 GMT

Gabi, you say you don't understand why people are against AI - did you read the thread about the AI feedback at all? Many people explained it very very clearly.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

onionella — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 14:19:50 GMT

It does not soothe me a single bit that your Orbit does not train on _my_ data, as long as it is based on any of the currently available efficient LLM's, since they all, every single one of them, are based on stoled copyrigthed content. You, Mozilla, are normalizing the laundering of intellectual property disguised as artificial intelligence.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

onequest — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 20:32:19 GMT

Seriously this is really cool to see, thanks for sharing! I'm also waiting for the Android version of this cuz that's my main computer. ✌🏼

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

SoliTheFox — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 23:50:08 GMT

I still don't quite see why adding more features is something bad really, especially if it is and optional feature.

I wonder how many of these people claiming "ethical high ground" actually don't use unblock origin or other ad blocks that are unethical towards people hosting websites. Servers are expensive as hell. Complete paywalls suck, and are unethical too, but stealing income from freely available knowledge is as much unethical as people keep arguing about "unethical scraping".

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Entropic_Decay — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 00:06:13 GMT

Yknow, figured I might as well reply to this again, make my feelings on this move of yours incredibly clear.

The Mozilla I remember from when I was growing up - and even up until a couple years ago - is dead in my eyes. You're not listening to the outcry of your user base, you're ignoring the moral and ethical concerns around this stuff you're trying to push (which, if you'll recall, you stopped accepting donations through crypto a few years back specifically due to moral and ethical concerns over it), you claim you're not harvesting user data as you've always avoided and yet in the last year you've put in a data-harvesting function on your Firefox browser that users were opted into by default. You've completely eroded what trust and loyalty I had for you, which was quite a bit. From the responses to this and your last generative model post, it seems that's the case for many others as well. It's going to be a massive uphill battle to win that trust back, if you even bother, and you'll have lost many permanently - myself included, very soon.

So, I'll end this off with a couple questions. Honestly, given the lack of response to the negative comments, I doubt an answer will be forthcoming, but I figure I'll ask regardless.
Who's paying you to shove this LLM garbage into your flagship offering, and how much was the price for your users' trust?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

SoliTheFox — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 00:06:58 GMT

Quick question: do you use any kind of ad blocker?

How ethical are ad blockers in terms of freely available knowledge? Especially for smaller websites.

How much does a server, domain and time does it cost to maintain a website up and running?

How are open models unethical and why does wget offer a recursive feature and why doesn't it get any hate? What about Heretrix from The Internet Archive? Is The Internet Archive ethical? Have you agreed on having snapshots of your website stored publicly?

I wonder what your opinion is about all of these topics.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

lackey — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 00:28:24 GMT

Adding features: can slow browser or introduce new places to break. Wastes time better spent elsewhere.

Refusing to consent to seeing things you don't like: not unethical

Taking people's things without consent: unethical

Do two wrongs equal a right? No

I hope this clears things up for you.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

SoliTheFox — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 02:59:25 GMT

I mean, if adding an OPTIONAL feature, as an extension, slows the browser down, then you should buy a new PC.

If someone uses ad blockers on someone else's website, it is someone else's website, it is their revenue you are taking away. If you use ad block you are taking people's things without consent, after all, the person is providing information freely as long as you consent to help him with the revenue by using ads. This is such a huge problem that Google is trying really hard to block people from using ad blockers. If this is not, by your own definition, unethical, then you are being hypocritical to say the least.

Hope this clears things up for you.

Also, i wonder what your opinion about The Internet Archive is, and more over, what your opinion about Heretrix (The Internet Archive crawler) is.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

lackey — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 13:30:35 GMT

Are you against taking things without people's consent?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

SoliTheFox — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 14:29:00 GMT

On the contrary. I use ad blockers. I believe in free knowledge, open science, open source, open access, whatever the source it comes from. Free of charge.

Being against GenAI without also being against The Internet Archive, scihub, zlib, Heretrix, recursive wget, and other websites or tools like these, that have been around for many years, is hypocritical to say the least.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

lackey — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 15:59:49 GMT

Your list is not exhaustive: it extends to taking people's possessions and bodies without consent, and the people and corporations with the most power can take the most.

I don't want to live in your world.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

SoliTheFox — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 20:59:03 GMT

Sure mate, definitely. By saying i'm in favor of open science, open source, open knowledge, etc. and taking it from big techs and industries that want to put paywalls on stuff that should be freely available, i'm definitely saying i want to steal your gf, wife, mom, etc. I'm also taking your car if you don't take care...

Sure mate, good thinking.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

SoliTheFox — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 21:18:20 GMT

Awesome! Can you guys consider using Llama3.1 instead? Or maybe 3.2 3b? They are really good multilingual models. In my experience they are one of the best models available and surpass mistral in day to day use. Consider Gemma2 9b and qwen2.5 too.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

lackey — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 05:50:02 GMT

Mate, I asked you whether you were against taking things with other people's consent. You said you supported taking things without people's consent.

If you wanted to only support some taking of things, you should specify that, because in this thread everyone has been talking about a corporation that takes from people, and you are on the side of that corporation.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

SoliTheFox — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 12:40:44 GMT

"Being against GenAI without also being against The Internet Archive, scihub, zlib, Heretrix, recursive wget, and other websites or tools like these [...]"

"If you use ad block you are taking people's things without consent, after all, the person is providing information freely as long as you consent to help him with the revenue by using ads."

People these days are against GenAI but at the same time can't even read or understand a basic text.

Also, Orbit uses a Mistral model. Mistral is not a large corporation. https://mistral.ai/company/

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

lackey — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 16:09:33 GMT

"not a large corporation" is valued at billions of dollars.

See, why did you even get upset about how I understood your answer, when I was right: you endorse the corporation taking from people without consent?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

ffffff — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 10:20:12 GMT

The Fakespot link is a little funny, isn't it? Maybe the same team is behind both projects, or something along those lines. I don't think there's anything shady happening as of now, having read Orbit's privacy policy. No idea whether that could change in the future.

I'm also interested in the third bullet point. I wonder if it would mean that much of a loss in functionality to have current Labs AI turned into an extension, even one made and endorsed by Mozilla. Surely there's been plenty of discussion on this, but I can't remember any details at this point.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

eliasaj — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 08:06:29 GMT

Looking forward to having this on Android. Summarize is a great tool!

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

haingdc — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 03:06:04 GMT

I'm still experience with this addon. These are something that we might need: In many sites, Orbit can hide content in the page, It's a need for collapse/expand feature to resolve it and still persist chat session.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

jeananton — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:48:37 GMT

Dear Mozilla Team,

I appreciate using Orbit for summarization, but it would be incredibly useful if it could provide summaries or responses in the language of the webpage or offer translations. This feature would greatly enhance its usability for non-English speakers.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

ariinator — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:30:32 GMT

I think this AI thing is a waste of time. A waste of dev time, a waste of digital space, a waste of electricity, a waste of your time and a waste of our time. It's already a sinking ship, and I don't respect any work that is created by it, nor anyone who uses it. This Art AI is disrespectful to real artists who took time to learn their skills, and the summery AI is disrespectful to anyone searching for an actual facts. It's also disrespectful to the children, who should be learning how to learn from the internet, not spoodfed answers that are usually very wrong. I dont usually bring up The Children, but this misinformation thing is getting out of hand.

It is my firm belief that the entire AI thing should be scrapped, but as long as you make it so I never have to look at or acknowledge it again, I'll settle for that.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

aperture — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:25:03 GMT

Local LLM would be great to process these summaries, some llms are getting very powerful. Ollama itself adds complexity on the user side especially with installation friction/config files, but would be well worth it for the "no information leakage" aspect for internal company documents.

https://ollama.com/library/smollm2

https://ollama.com/library/granite3.1-moe

https://ollama.com/library/llama3.2

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

jeananton — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 19:04:59 GMT

@ariinator wrote:
....but as long as you make it so I never have to look at or acknowledge it again, I'll settle for that.

Yes, I think that's all you'll have left to do.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

probablywrong — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 17:23:10 GMT

This is a very cool add-on and I'm really glad I found it. A couple suggestions:

An option to have no icon on the page at all and just work from the extension icon.
Let me disable it on a per-website basis, not just globally. Kind of surprised this isn't there already.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

go_awai — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 15:43:19 GMT

Please take a stand and be the one browser that doesn't do crypto and AI.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

Peregrine — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 11:04:36 GMT

I just tried it out recently, but then uninstalled it.

I think orbit will be a convenient tool if we can customise it, including interface, language, and prompt.

It's current font is unfriendly for readers.
It doesn't support Chinese
It doesn't allow users to tweak prompt

Overall, it simply does not let us do anything.

Also, people won't trust this add-on fully until it becomes an open source extension.

Orbit requires almost every permission to work, which is quite intrusive in terms of privacy, so how can we just state oh I'll believe all you said without checking any code.

I know you are a passionate developer, so do I.

I'm not blaming for Orbit's pre-maturity, but hope it gets better.

The minimum conditions I'll install Orbit and use it formally is Open Source.

I can tolerate its minor flaws but privacy can't be compromised.

Despite its privacy statement, we shall stay trustless considering plenty of close-sourced software scandals.

Hope Orbit will get better after some additional work, thanks you.

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

ikol89892 — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 15:10:57 GMT

It seems Orbit has been discontinued, which is unfortunate as I found it very useful. Perhaps greater integration with Firefox could have helped. Are there plans for future developments, or has this project been permanently abandoned?

Re: Try Orbit by Mozilla: a new AI productivity tool

doodlemancy — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 05:37:47 GMT

Hahaha. Less than a year, huh? That's rough. If only anyone had warned you that AI was a dead end and nobody wanted it. Like, I dunno, maybe several thousand people on this very forum over a period of weeks last year, in another thread, who you steadfastly ignored as they all told you that nobody wants these features.

Have fun with the rest of the backtracking! Maybe look where you're going next time.