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!

[0xHazel]

really annoying to see mozilla pushing this crap 😕 makes it hard to recommend firefox

[rochechouart13]

The so-called "AI" has a myriad of ethical, environmental, and social issues. It's a bubble that relies on some big corporations trying to get investments. Having this bull**bleep** implemented into Firefox is a terrible decision that goes against all the values of the Mozilla Manifesto. No matter whether a user chooses Hugging Chat, or an on-device model, these models have been trained on a wide range of material, disregarding copyright or licences, using a lot of energy, and relying on underpaid workers to further train the model. I am utterly disgusted by this choice and your attempts to justify this are out of place in the open source community.

[Hertog]

Why?

anyone helped by this could already have opened a browser tab for it?

Or if you wish to have it play a more integral role an extension should suffice.

So far from EVERY post I have seen about this the absolute vast majority has screamed a loud a clear HELL NO so why ignore that cry? Does mozilla think it knows better than this majority?

[Resuna]

There is no AI software. There are parody generators that are at best useful for entertainment purposes. They are not search engines and do not generate results that are anything but plausible extensions of the query. Not correct, plausible, something that a human might mistake as being written by a human. They do not have any place as a default part of a browser. If you want to make an extension for amusement purposes, go ahead, but keep it out of your code base.

[DiogoConstantin]

This is something I would rather Mozilla wouldn't do.

1. I don't want a chat bot on my browser;
2. I don't want my browser making any calls to any external AI provider. By external I mean anything not running on my browser;
3. I only want AI features for things such as translations, if: they're not chat bots, are not making calls to external services (anything outside the browser), or if there's also the possibly to make calls to external services they have to also available to bee Free Software and easy to deploy by all.

If Mozilla still wants to do this, then please don't make it built in within the browser, make it an extension.

I would much rather that you focus on things such as making Firefox containers easier to use when opening a new window or new tab, integrating temporary Firefox containers.

[rdna]

If AI is added to Mozilla, frankly I would be happy to see it die in a hole. It would make you no better than any other browser creator out there and show to everyone that you have well and truly lost your way. I used to take pride in using Firefox; What used to be a private, user-centric browser that has clearly fallen off its path of glory with Pocket advertisements on my new tab page by default, Firefox VPN adverts baked into the browser and now this AI garbage. Despicable.

[cam_]

Hi, I do not want this in my browser, and I will stop using Firefox if it's integrated.

[Spottedkitty]

No. Just no. Mozilla have been making some really dumb decisions of late and this is another one. If it must be includes I want a way of removing it entirely so it can never be "accidentally" turned on now or in the future..

[matthew_t]

I moved back to Firefox around 5 years ago after getting fed up with Google Chrome's constant adding of nonsense. I really like Firefox and would like it to stay that way. Gen AI is an extremely expensive and hurtful fad, like if pogs burned down forests or webkinz took away jobs from artists. The use case for gen AI has proven to be almost none and it is almost certainly going to crash once VC dries up. Firefox has allowed me to be free of Gen AI garbage for most of the last two years and I'm disappointed they're open to incorporating access to it into the browser. Please don't do this.

[jellyghost]

I would much prefer my favorite browser not fall into the AI fad, I have a lot of ethical issues with AI right now and I don't want to have to reconsider using Firefox for it's purposeful embrace of broken AI systems

[LemmaEOF]

As a lifelong Firefox user, the AI services experiment is making me consider switching browsers. It feels not only unnecessary but downright predatory - I don't want multiple companies which have been repeatedly caught ignoring robots.txt files and all sorts of other restrictions on data privacy to have any level of integration into my browser. This feature completely erodes Firefox's promise of security and reliability, and I will not be using Firefox going forward if it remains in the browser.

[JackdawDotTV]

ABSOLUTELY NOT. I will stop using all Mozilla products. What is the reason for including this unnecessary bloat? What genuine relevant to the average user use case is there? Firefox is supposed to be the browser that is free of the things that make other browsers unwieldy and invasive. This addition is against both of those tenets.

[ChrisAir]

Can you please NOT do this?

[BearEnthusiast]

Please do not include "AI" functionality in Firefox. What I'm looking for in a web browser is generally the lack of features that are pointless or actively drag the program down, and Firefox so far has been the best one for me.

[businessethics]

"Artificial intelligence" has saved me a lot of time. Whenever a company invests in "artificial intelligence" or adds "AI" features to their product, I know that the company is run by a bunch of bozos, and I shouldn't waste my time with them.

The story of "generative AI" is the story of Theranos all over again. People are pretending that there's been a major, society-transforming innovation, but the product does not work as advertised, and it is clearly never going to work as advertised. The output of the "Edison machine" was just B.S. The output of "generative AI" is just B.S.

Try asking an LLM, "A man and a goat are on one side of the river. They have a boat. How can they both go across?" You won't get a sensible answer. You'll get a word salad involving multiple trips across the river, because the LLM is imitating published answers to a brainteaser. The LLM has no understanding of the question and is not engaged in any form of reasoning.

I am downloading LibreWolf. I am researching browser alternatives that do not use Mozilla or Google code.

You are destroying your brand with this pivot to "AI."

[EzioJensenThird]

Short Answer: No

Long Answer: Get those plagirism, planet destroying garbage off my browser. Pull your head out of your behinds and gain some clerity and self respect for crying out loud.

[ColorfulCorn]

I do not want to try this.

I do not what this on my computer.

This is not a feature I would ever want from a "Web browser" any more than I want Firefox to make pizza or give me a foot rub.

Stay in your lane, Firefox, and make a web browser. The only reason I use Firefox is because it connects to less gross stuff than the competition, but I've almost lost my faith.

If I want an "AI chatbot" I can find them. They're incredibly easy to find. Let users add it as an add-on. That's exactly what add-ons are for.

[Kyuseishun]

Please no

[EmoSludge]

No AI in Firefox pleeeeeeeeeaasse. No LLM garbage. Stop contributing to the destruction of both the planet and the internet!

[edige23]

NO.

[photostyle]

Get "AI" out of my browser. You've all clearly not read the room. So many people use Firefox to get away from all the garbage in other browsers, but here you are, adding the same crap we're trying to get away from.

[Nickchang]

Please do not. Im tired of ai everything that i can only switch off if i know i can switch it off. I dont want it. It is a constant erosion of what we want. Ai is an excuse to use up resources and take away work from people. Im tired of it being shoved  everywhere it doesnt need to be. Hold out. 

[jkaufman]

Please do not incorporate AI into Mozilla. In addition to breeding distrust that any content a user posts will now be scoured and used, and resentment of having this technology forced down our collective throats as the latest "new thing," AI generated results can be very inaccurate, and I'm seeing that fuel widespread distrust for Google results specifically. I use Firefox rather precisely because it isn't Edge or Bing, and I can't imagine that's a unique sentiment.

[Rewhan]

Plase don't implement AI into Firefox. It's already in most Chromium browsers and tanks performance for no appreciable value, nevermind its numerous ethical concerns regarding data scraping.

[algiahyena]

None of your users want this. A lot of us switched to Firefox because of Google's relentless AI-ification of everything. Why would you get on a train everyone is trying to jump off?

[onnes]

Do Not

[callmearcturus]

I have been using Firefox since Quantum but inclusion of AI will make me move to another browser.

[JohnWilker]

No. Seriously, No. This isn't something anyone asked for. It's not something anyone wants. Stand out and get off the Creative economy destroying theft machine bandwagon.

[GrayBlacklight]

Welp, i made a new account for this, and the hard part is figuring out what to say that hasn't already been said. You KNOW AI is bad. Harmful for the environment, stealing from all kinds of creators, and of course a massive invasion of privacy- isn't that last one something you specifically promised not to do? It's the reason a lot of people are use firefox in the first place, in a world where most other options are reskins of chrome, which is more spyware than browser. People *will* stop using this browser over this, and i doubt anyone will be brought over- most people oblivious enough to be fine with Ai probably think they are fine with google. I cannot think of a single way this could go well for you, at best implementing this would be a massive blunder you will spend the next year trying to recover from, more if you try to insist on keeping it.

[BlorgBlorgBlorg]

joining the chorus of made a new account to tell you to stop but also, it's insulting and fools no one to have a paid employee try to pull nonsense like "ah but what if all algorithms were counted as AI, rather than the cloud LLM integration that is the topic of discussion? you'd sound pretty short-sighted in that scenario i invented, wouldn't you?  think on this incredible own i've just devised in my genius brain."

either stop wasting resources on and remove this worthless feature that is rightfully receiving backlash, or explicitly confirm that it will be implemented regardless of user feedback.  if you want to hop on this rube bandwagon then at least have the stones to be loud and proud about it.

[onionella]

I have been a Firefox user for my whole life. My dad installed it on my first computer. I have ever since used it on every computer or phone I have had, and have recommended using it to everyone.

If this flirting with AI doesn't stop immediately, I am going to switch browsers, possibly to Vivaldi who have taken a much more reasonable stance on AI.

All current large language models are made from stolen intellectual property. That is probably a violation of current copyright rules, and certainly highly immoral. This is also violating millions of third party people's privacy. An LLM thus can never be private, even if the user connection was 100% private. One could say that the making of ChatGPT has been the largest heist of human history, and what makes it even worse that it is a heist of capital and power from the people to the richest permille.

Here are some sources for my claims:

https://urheber.info/diskurs/ai-training-is-copyright-infringement

https://spectrum.ieee.org/midjourney-copyright

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/01/openai-says-its-impossible-to-create-useful-a...

https://europeanwriterscouncil.eu/gai-is-based-on-theft/

And I don't care if the model markets itself as "open source" or something, like the OLMo one the employee in this thread has been bringing up. Even if they share their model weights, it is still built from stolen material. Even if they share their data, like OLMo do, it is built from stolen material. The largest data source of OLMo is Common Crawl, which indeed contains mostly copyrighted content. Taking something proprietary and releasing it as "open source" to the internet is usually called piracy. Is piracy something Mozilla is endorsing?

No amount of spinning words can turn this product category that is categorically made from unbelieveable amounts of stolen material ethical. And I am not using any kind of product that is in any way involved with this kind of "generative AI".

[squidkid11]

I made an account for the sole and specific purpose of adding my voice to the chorus of 'No's. I have made an active effort to never use any sort of generative AI, and to scrub absolutely any of it from my computer. I've gone to great lengths to shut up Cortana or whatever it was that windows had, I have scrubbed it from anywhere and anything. I swapped browsers and search engines for this reason.

It's downright insulting to see Firefox - one of the only safe havens left on the AI and advertisement infested internet - falling to it. And it's absolutely wild to read employee replies to this thread responding to anyone who licks AI's boots so positively, while using incredibly manipulative language and leading questions in reply to the negative responses (of which SHOCKINGLY few have actually been responded to).

And it's frankly embarrassing on Mozilla's end to think that this would have gone over well. The vast majority of Firefox users are here for the privacy. If they didn't care about it they'd probably be using Chrome or Edge or whatever else there is. Echoing other sentiments from others, this is Mozilla desperately jumping on a trend that has so many problems tied up in it there is absolutely no ethical use. Models are almost always trained on stolen and scraped data and information, not to mention the environmental cost.

Firefox has a great chance to promote itself as a browser that does not use AI like this, it would attract a lot more people by the fact that it's one of the only browsers like that. Instead you're throwing your lot in the likes of GOOGLE. Why would you think that's a good idea. I can't believe you'd consider this. If this is fully implemented I'll be hunting down another browser. I will not use a program that tries so desperately to stuff AI down my throat.

[Anderjak]

I have stopped using a lot of services and platforms solely on the grounds that they have begun attempting to integrate AI. Every time I do, I inevitably see the same story: AI-generated misinformation (often to a dangerous and life-threatening degree), a massive influx of AI art that drowns out the works of human-made works (and driving down the visibility of professional artists), and companies having to pull back because they realize their AI doesn't work the way they thought it would and it was draining more money from them simply for upkeep that they had to find alternative means of funding through more manipulative consumer practices.

So, no. If you integrate anything into the final version, I will no longer use Firefox or any Mozilla service, because I know it will be a worse browser, and that services provided by Mozilla will be less reliable and consistent and more predatory, because that is what happens every time someone does this.

[IronClaw99]

AI is not welcome in Firefox. If Firefox implements AI, we are screwed.

[lesmcclaine]

If "AI" is added to Firefox I will begin looking for a different browser to use. It is not useful or wanted.

[farmergadda]

For the love of God, not even as an option. I literally sell your browser to other people with the complete lack of AI as a feature. This is a slippery slope I refuse to follow you down, ffs don't.

[PepperSinclaire]

No thanks

[FrivYeti]

Hi, Mardak. Thank you for asking for feedback.

My feedback is that I specifically returned to Firefox after years as a Google user because Mozilla wasn't joining the AI bandwagon. If you're chaining your wagon to that sinking ship after years of talking up your support of user privacy, I might as well go back to them. Please don't sink Mozilla chasing a pointless and destructive piece of garbage buzzwording that goes against everything you say your company stands for.

[rainathrownaway]

Please do not AI.

[MulletVampire]

There's really no shortage of AI tools available to us at this point.

One might even suggest they're becoming difficult to avoid.

Not sure why anyone would ever need or want to access this in a browser sidebar. This is not what browsers are for.

No thanks.