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!

[Kombee]

The fact that you are comparing LLM-driven features to non-LLM powered features such as autofill and completion suggestions shows that either A) you have no frikin clue what you're talking about. But I'm going to assume you're not an idiot and you do in fact know the difference between how autofills and suggestions work vs how "AI"/LLMs work, which leaves me with B) you're choosing to be incredibly dishonest with the user base by making comments such as this in an attempt to leverage our assumed stupidity (news flash, most of us aren't idiots and even we know the difference here) to convince us this feature is the same as existing features in implementation and protocol. It is not. You know. I know this. We know this. Stop being dishonest with us because you've already convinced yourselves this will be added and now you're doing the same thing every techbro is and play dumb to sell the userbase on a feature they didn't ask for.

Focus on more programmatic and direct engineering solutions to whatever you think "AI" will accomplish instead of using AI as a shortcut for new features.

[NosirrahSec]

We don't want this garbage at all. That is the vast majority of users' opinion.

[NosirrahSec]

No one wants this garbage.

No one cares what moronic opinion you have on it.

[aintnoway]

You're being intentionally obtuse. You know those aren't the same things.

[omlt]

You're conflating actual automation of tasks and generative AI (the plagiarism machine) and therefore providing cover to techbros and VC investors that are trying to rebrand all (useful) automation features as AI.

An algorithm IS NOT AI. And you're weaseling words here.

YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF.

MOZILLA WASN'T FOUNDED FOR THIS, THIS IS A DISGRACE TO THE VERY CORE MISSION AND STATEMENT OF MOZILLA AND FIREFOX.

[cgranade]

I'm old enough to remember when that was called "machine learning," and wasn't doing the branding work for giant companies that do not have the Internet's best interests at heart.

[penryu]

Address bar completion / tab prediction doesn't use "AI". It uses simple substring autocompletion and tab metadata heuristics that have been around for many years, without the ethical and environmental concerns now in play wrt LLMs.

And if you specifically mean the "fuzzy" tab matching/completion that LLMs can provide, then you've found the exact features of AI that have made Google's AI Assistant a laughing stock — the least useful, least relevant, and least wanted features, that you SHOULD want to keep far away from such a fundamentally important project as Firefox.

As for translation... IFF LLMs were used in page content translation, and IFF such use were actually "privacy-preserving", then that seems an _ideal_ opportunity for an optional extension rather than integrated LLM nonsense.

This is undoubtedly a thankless job, even if you are a proponent of the feature. But your employer has solicited feedback on this "feature", so it seems strange that so many employee responses seem to be trying to convince opponents of the feature that their feedback is wrong, rather than simply collecting, considering, and acting on it.

[dtw_]

This is what happens when all algorithms are suddenly called "AI"...

[Saeldis]

How.... "delightfully" disingenuous.

I was going to expound on that, but honestly it's so disingenuous this is all it deserves. You should be deeply ashamed of yourself.

[dggozo]

History suggestions, is that all you got? We need AI for that?

[JHeuser]

We're not stupid. There's a clear difference between translations based on machine learning and prediction algorithms, and LLMs. We want the LLMs out. Take them out.

[doodlemancy]

Y'know, when you try to rules-lawyer about any kind of algorithm/machine learning being "artificial intelligence" and try to re-brand stuff that already existed with the buzzword of the moment... in a roundabout way, you kinda help undermine the very illusion the AI crowd is trying to perpetuate.

[IBBoard]

"AI" is just the latest marketing umbrella, and it's dishonest to try and excuse the bad stuff (GenAI and LLMs) by pointing to the good stuff (data analysis, machine learning models, or simple "ranking by similarity and visit count" metrics most of what the address bar does).

If someone wants to use GenAI and LLMs then they can choose to use an extension. Nothing about an extension increases or decreases the options on privacy-preserving AI. You then also preserve the privacy of more people by not having it in there for the majority who have zero use, and for whom GenAI is a net negative to society.

[No3]

Kindly stop putting your fingers in your ears because you got told 'No' and you don't like being told 'No'. 

(See Haagee's comment for a clear and concise breakdown about why your replies are bs so far though I doubt you'll listen to that either. Banging your own 'we are the best we know best we could never be wrong' cymbals too loudly to hear anything else.)

[LeafyGreens]

The benefit that users get from firefox is the absence of exactly this kind of garbage. You are making your product worse and removing the very reason why people use it.

People don't use firefox because they want to follow the latest trends. They use it because the competition is toxic and hostile. Firefox's raison d'etre is to provide a way for people to browse the web without having to bow to corporate overlords. If you start treating people like your competition does, firefox will cease to exist.

[dhasenan]

What we want to avoid is increasing usage of bullcrap generators, especially those built on plagiarism on an unprecedented scale. (We also want to avoid any features that might read more of our data than we've consented to, but it looks like this feature doesn't proactively send data to them without permission -- for now.)

A locally built Bayesian model to determine which URL I am likely to navigate to based on my first few keypresses in the address bar does not have those problems. Conflating them is disingenuous.

[penryu]

This is deliberately obtuse, not to mention misattributing common browser heuristics to "AI."

I'm sure you've long since tied your horse to the AI post, but please don't insult our intelligence with this sort of disingenuous posturing.

[DiogoConstantin]

I certainly don't want those "benefits" I don't want that type of feature on my browser.

How could this help privacy preserving AI alternatives, instead of all AI?

[a7h13f]

I'll be moving away from Firefox because of these changes, but thanks for being open and honest about your company's intent.

I originally switched to Firefox *because* it was less bloated, cleaner, and more privacy focused than the alternatives. I'm sad to see Firefox move away from the original design philosophy.

[RattyTatTat]

You can tell that everyone hates the idea completely by now, right. Continuing would be a slap in the face.

[weaf]

i disable predicting loading and translate. no ai needed to search the history. so it would NOT significantly recude my benefit. i don't understand what you mean by "features such as privacy preserving AI alternatives"

[jlries61]

I'm sure someone wants it, but I don't.

[VildaVedo]

Dude, what the hell. If you don't like this feature, then don't enable it over checkbox...

[magentapuppy]

yeah keep adding this useless and privacy invasive stuff that *all* the big corps are doing, rather than adding features that actually differentiate it, particularly as a less 'BS' browser option 🙄

[Mardak]

We included chatbot providers like HuggingChat which says: "We endorse Privacy by Design. As such, your conversations are private to you and will not be shared with anyone, including model authors, for any purpose, including for research or model training purposes."

Additionally, if you don't want to use a remotely hosted chatbot, you could use one that's on-device so data doesn't leave your computer while getting the benefits of optional AI.

[lackey]

AI has myriad ethical and environmental issues behind it. The first two options offered by Mozilla are created by some of the most invasive, unethical, environmentally destructive companies in the AI space. Google and Microsoft are not known for being private, not even a little bit.

The general issues behind AI, and the fact companies like HuFace need to scrape data without consent or permission, makes me question their promise to keep the data I offer them private.

These new changes appear antithetical to the Mozilla Manifesto.

I believe Mozilla should cease their attempts to integrate AI into the browser, and to reevaluate the ethical implications of promoting these products by these companies.

[KTibow]

It's just another browser but in a sidebar. You can access "unethical" content with both browsers. It's not a big deal.

[Razorwire]

Your argument is based on whataboutism, which is a common logical fallacy.

- "Firefox shouldn't add an unethical feature"
- "But there's already unethical stuff on the Internet"

A company adding an unethical feature to their browser is (obviously) not equivalent to the browser being able to access unethical content not created by said company, and even if it was, how is "unethical things already exists" a point in favor of adding MORE unethical things?

Ridiculous argument.

[Lenyberry]

There is a massive difference between loading websites that contain unethical content (which is impossible to consistently differentiate in-browser for a BROWSER) and jamming unethical content into the browser itself. Don't play disingenuous strawman games.

[magentapuppy]

Unfortunately I do not count scraping people's data without consent of any kind "private by design"

And wow, it must take an awful person to only consider the 'end user' as the one deserving of privacy. Like, just, wow.

[AdventureGamer]

And how long will that last? How long has that *ever* lasted? Remember Don't Be Evil? Gone. We're not stupid, and I think y'all have forgotten some crucially classic blunders in tech history. If you let this in, it will be a death knell for Mozilla as a brand and Firefox as a browser. What's your plan to divest from this technology *when*, not if, they're bought out by a larger company, one that doesn't have the same respect for privacy you do? Are you prepared to make the necessary sacrifice and risk pissing off the less aware among us who don't realize the dangers of this digital gentrification? They're colonizing Mozilla, man. Don't sell the farm! Please. Pretty please don't break our hearts and lives like this. It's *going* to snowball out of your control. This pattern has played out again and again without fail since the dawn of the internet. It started with freedom and connectivity, and it ends with oppression, surveillance, and false loyalty.

Mark my words.

[Emmic]

sure, that's a nice privacy policy for the chat itself. what about all the stuff the AI is scraping from the internet to feed itself? what about the privacy issues surrounding that?

[MOOMANiBE]

A chatbot can never truly endorse or respect privacy as their entire design is propped up on the denial thereof - an outright-hostile harvesting of the entire internet with zero regard to the damage caused. Your inclusion of AI features in firefox is a fundamental endorsement of that denial of privacy. This kind of naked trend-chasing erodes FF's identity as a browser, and a Firefox that's philosophically indistinguishable from Chrome is a Firefox that has no future at all.

[240-185]

I created a Mozilla account just for asking this one question:

What part of "We didn't ask for such a feature" don't you understand?

[Seyjan]

Same to all this.  Keep this AI nonsense out of the browser.

[Justificand]

Yep - and I'll jump ship of this goes ahead.

[skulltaffy]

Also jumping ship if this goes ahead. Nightmare idea.

[dggozo]

we've already had AI companies lie about stealing material for their databases, why do you believe them when they talk about privacy?

[BZM-200]

---

@Mardak wrote:

We included chatbot providers like HuggingChat which says: "We endorse Privacy by Design.

Assurances like this from companies in that space are worthless. Your kind of credulous presentation of them as some kind of magic pill to make the badness go away is a central reason why Mozilla's word is rapidly sinking to that same (non)credibility level.

[lackey]

"Keep in mind that opting out is a request you can make to the company. You have to trust [AI  companies including HuggingChat] to honor it -- and Big Tech hasn’t always played by the rules when it comes to consumers’ data.

Source: Mozilla, "How to Protect Your Privacy From ChatGPT and Other AI Chatbots"