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!

[kepstin]

This checkbox has since been enabled by default. I had to go and manually turn this off. I did not want this. This needs to be fixed.

[BlorgBlorgBlorg]

No, because, as you are aware, such models do not exist.  It would be more honest to either not respond to AI critics at all, or directly tell them you (and Mozilla) don't care about their concerns.

[PrankishHarmon]

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@lackey wrote:

a feature that users didn't request

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Who are these users? This generalised statement sounds biased and echo-chamber-y. The once who don't want this kind of feature will be loudest and most enganged in this thread, not necessarily the majority of Firefox users.

[lackey]

I said users didn't request it.

If you want to see users not requesting it, just look at this whole forum before Mozilla announced the unwanted, un-requested AI feature. 

You're among them. 

[BlorgBlorgBlorg]

There are not any companies operating in the LLM space that meet ethical standards regarding privacy and environmental impact, as you are aware.  Asking anyway creates the illusion that you are open to this feedback, and puts the onus on the person who shared their concerns with you in good faith to waste their time answering.  It would be more honest to either not respond to AI critics at all, or directly tell them you (and Mozilla) don't care about their concerns.

[qu1j0t3]

there is no ethical way to train and run LLMs. it just so happens that the companies you've named are particularly vile.

[everentropy]

That is absolutely not the main concern, it's just the only one you're paying attention to.

[-0]

Why does this need to be shipped with Firefox? Can't this be an extension? I want less AI, not more. 😞

[Mardak]

This is currently a first integration of AI with plans for more optional functionality that don't require a sidebar interface, e.g., suggesting tabs that are relevant to your current activity or name for a tab group. Getting to more seamless integrations would likely be trickier as an extension and can be implemented with minimal impact for those who don't want it.

[AdventureGamer]

You're carrying water for the colonization of the digital space, slapping every single Firefox user in the face.

Mozilla was supposed to be better than that. How actually dare you.

[omlt]

Respectfully (because you've clearly been given the **bleep**ty end of the stick with handling community response) :

NOBODY ASKED FOR THIS, NOBODY WANTS THIS.

F THE PLAGIARISM MACHINES

[GrislyBoar]

I have several questions:

1. What do you mean by "functionality?" What's the function? How does this make Firefox better?

2. Are you aware that the use of generative algorithms advertised as "AI" (I stress this because it is not true AI) make users find you and your product untrustworthy, and there are studies saying so?

3. The implementation of generative algorithms has been a failure across the board. What makes you think it won't be a failure here, too? Because as it turns out, tools that were designed for specific niche purposes, mostly relating to statistics, aren't particularly useful outside of that setting.

4. Why the insistence on it? Nobody's interested except shareholders. And even their interest is waning due to the lackluster results of these tools.

Being told repeatedly that something is the future of tech and repeating it to others does not magically make it so. These generative tools have been demonstrated over and over again that they can't perform any task that they're advertised as capable of, largely because said tasks were not what they were designed for. There are already simpler, less wasteful tools that do these jobs much better.

It baffles me that executives at *computer software companies* can display such egregious tech illiteracy all for the sake of hoping people will buy into what is essentially digital snake oil. Just because Steve Jobs had one good idea that eventually worked doesn't make everything the industry pushes the same. Yet so many are so infatuated with the idea of Steve Jobs, they're obsessed with emulating him. In my opinion, there are too many Steve Jobses in the tech industry.

What we need are more Steve Wozniaks. Not in the sense that he was a computer engineering genius, but in the fact that he was a genuinely nice, agreeable person. And he was also the one person who told Jobs "no." His insistence on putting eight expansion slots in the Apple II when Jobs didn't want them was what made Apple a success in the beginning. His tech literacy gave him authority that Jobs didn't.

Success in the tech sphere does not begin and end with successful marketing. It happens when the people who know what they're talking about, and know what the consumer truly wants, can tell executives "no" and make marketing stay in their lane.

[Empterdose]

Getting to more seamless integrations would likely be trickier as an extension

You know what's really cool? Mozilla, as the developers of the browser, can enhance the capabilities of extensions to make it possible to integrate things like this seamlessly!

Complaining that the platform you built is inadequate rings pretty hollow, particularly when the community has been telling you that over and over again since the switch to WebExtensions.

[VyriaDurav]

I want none of this. Absolutely none of this. All of it is antithetical to the principles that made me choose this browser over Chrome and it's myriad clones. The fact that not only is this something being proposed, but you have the audacity to talk about expanding it further before even checking to see if people are willing to overlook this horrendous action? Cease. I don't need any of these features and I certainly don't want to burn the world to the ground powering them. I can find my own websites, I don't need an environmental hazard and panopticon doing it for me.

[Sintanity]

An alogrithm that auto-completes a search result or suggests an open tab isn't the same as an LLM like ChatGPT and making this comparison either means you have no idea what you're talking about or is deliberately obtuse. Weird and gross behavior.

[dggozo]

those are bad features even without considering the cost of AI. I can name a tab group myself.

[MageBunkshelf]

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@Mardak wrote:

This is currently a first integration of AI with plans for more optional functionality that don't require a sidebar interface, e.g., suggesting tabs that are relevant to your current activity or name for a tab group.

---

Jesus christ no

[AntBand]

it sounds awful like wtf

[simonjadis]

If Firefox were to ever "recommend" a tab to me based upon what I'm doing, I would use Firefox to find and download a new browser.

[malogan]

"minimal impact for those who don't want it"

That's cool. Since minimal isn't worth being concerned over, you guys have some big name financial supporters so if I stop my monthly donation to the mozilla foundation that should also be pretty minimal, yeah?

[Lenyberry]

"suggesting tabs that are relevant to your current activity or name for a tab group" sounds like a terrible, annoying feature that I actively do not want to ever be bothered by having to go figure out how to disable!

Let people use their own brains to decide what they want to do and how they want to name things, ffs.

[greenbird]

Honest question: is "what should I call this tab group" a problem you have so often that you need an outside source to help you?

[rarsneezes]

Sorry, I really don't want Firefox - and especially not any AI services - to be paying enough attention to my browsing history/tabs to suggest me new tabs. I don't care if the tabs are relavent or not - What happened to Firefox protecting my browsing data privacy?

[benlk]

If the roadmapped future integrations require access to browser APIs that aren't available to extensions, then Firefox should figure out how to make those extensions available to extensions in a safe way, rather than using this as an excuse to shoehorn unwanted AI API clients into Firefox. Leave the AI API client in an optional extension that users can install.

[verbedr]

Making it possible for all extension to benefit the same seamless integration would benefit everyone.  I would focus on that, instead of trying to integrate "an" AI into your product.

Consider this as a challenge, eat your own dogfood.

[AntBand]

we want NO impact. ZERO.

[milleniumbug]

> suggesting tabs that are relevant to your current activity or name for a tab group

not gonna lie, asking a remote service or a local LLM for this sounds absolutely miserable.

Also this is a self-admission that your extension system is not good enough. But honestly it seems you are trying to manufacture a demand where there is none.

[coepi]

Frankly, I'm not sure I can believe you. There's money to be made in the AI trend despite it being wildly unethical and out of step with Mozilla's supposed values, so you've decided to force it onto all of your users. I suspect you don't want it to be an extension because then we could fully opt out of it (and no, 'just don't use it' is not an acceptable solution for reasons others have explained above).

[montrovy]

Legitimately none of that sounds appealing, never once have I opened a tab and not known what I want to look for. And is it really that hard to name a tab group?

[Ok-Horror-50861]

"minimal impact" is still an impact.  please rethink this as people use firefox to get away from the privacy violating MO of the other browsers.  You should not in any way be forcing AI on your user base.  Its truly unfortunate the mozilla cannot seem to understand why users pick firefox over others.  There is no reason other than it being "trickier", as you say, not to make this an extension.  Sometimes work is hard.  Stop taking shortcuts and preserve firefox as is.

[Mardak]

There's AI in many forms in Firefox such as how it predicts the page you want to revisit from the address bar and translates content locally on device. If these AI capabilities were moved to extensions, it would probably significantly reduce the benefit users get from Firefox and likely prevent other useful features such as privacy preserving AI alternatives.

[Anonymous]

This is a forum with a bunch of tech-savvy computer geeks. Not a VC firm with more money than sense. If this post was an announcement that you have developed a machine learning algorithm predicting which tab you want to switch to - that would get a positive reception.

But if you make a very general statement that you are implementing "AI", have hooked up four extremely problematic LLM chatbots, and that this is just the beginning - you will not. The responses are going to be "NO", "STOP IT" and "GOD NO PLEASE DO LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE INSTEAD".

And there are clearly dedicated commenters here, making lengthy efforts to spell out the individual problems they see at the heart of LLMs and this project in detail. Up to writing an entire analysis of all the core Firefox principals they feel are violated. Followed by comments from your end on how that feedback is being taken into consideration.

I don't share that optimism. There are certainly constructive lessons to be learned here, but not by taking the team that seemingly didn't see these problems for the entire time that they were developing it, and giving them those comments for consideration.

This is a textbook case for setting up a quick Red Team if I ever saw one. Please, for the love of god, get a few trusted and knowledgeable people together from outside the project. Let them take a critical look at the whole situation. Because the current gap between the users and the dev team is too big to be filled by some basic constructive criticism, and it can end up doing real damage here.

[saphkey]

It's basically just a tab in the sidebar instead of where it usually sits on top.
If you dont want want to use a website then dont visit it.

[omlt]

WE DON'T CARE.

WE DON'T WANT THIS **bleep**. PURE AND SIMPLE.

[dimpase]

no, you don't want it *present* on your machines. if it is present, but disabled, there still will be cases when it gets turned on (e.g. by an automatic update, which happily overwrites settings). And then private data on your machines is no longer private.

[Anonymous]

I wrote a five paragraph comment, spelling out my concerns that the advocates of this feature are entirely missing the point on why so many users are deeply concerned about its implementation like this.

To which you apparently responded Just don't use it? Thank you for trying to ease my concerns - BUT THAT'S NOT HELPING.

[Justificand]

If chatbots or something of that stain of "AI" gets forced onto me with Firefox - there are always other browsers.

[DerelictDrone]

But those aren't machine learning or an LLM, they don't require an internet connection, nor do they burn your cpu and gpu alive to perform.

Any reputable use of what we called "AI" before has moved on to more specific terminology to distance itself from both the hype train of LLMS, or image generation, and their negative press, we can live with just ranking pages based on how many times you visited them to predict which page they are most likely to visit, but users are drawing the line at automatically including LLMs, that either consume significant resources to produce the barest output or require a cloud connection to perform.

Please try and remember that you're making a web browser, anything past "browsing the web" should be an extension.

[BlorgBlorgBlorg]

You know exactly what the difference between these algorithms and the LLM integration you're working on is. It would be more honest to either not respond to AI critics at all, or directly tell them you (and Mozilla) don't care about their concerns.

[Kwonunn]

You know full well that those are not the AI stuff we are concerned about. By including and promoting products from these wildly unethical AI companies Mozilla is indirectly worsening the whole thing. Please please please remove this.