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!

[prolixity]

No. Please don't add AI to Firefox.

[disastermychild]

NO. Firefox is the last bastion of sanity, please don't ruin it by allowing AI to encroach. 

[Anonyusssss]

Absolutely not. Keep "AI" out of this last remaining bastion of well intentioned software.

[wklew]

the plagiarism and labor disruption machine that drains lakes and burns rainforests to come up with wrong answers? no thank you

[edibleflowers]

Please do not add AI to Firefox. It's the only browser I fully recommend to everyone I know because its features like data safety and privacy are so good, and I've always felt like it sticks up for the user; this would be yet another, extremely saddening case of "AI" being forced on the users whether they want it or not. What would even be the use of these "AI services"? So far, I have yet to see a single hyped-up claim that "AI" will help us actually being true in any way. If anything, it's actively making the Internet worse. So, please, just don't. Don't do it.

[JHeuser]

Look at the replies here, look at the ones with the most votes kudos, look at the blatant abuse of privacy and copywrite AI companies have bought and  and ask yourself if you really think you're doing the right thing.

The only ethical AI is no AI. Take it out.

[mephistos]

Why can't you leave working things alone? 😞 AI RUINED google and so many other good things. It hallucinates information more often than it doesn't and instead of giving you proper answers backed up by science, it looks up the most "popular" answer or tells you what you think you want to know. (No joke I once saw an AI link a customer to a Rickroll video because it had so many links attached to it.)

If you're truly dedicated to good customer service, integrity, and functionality, for the love of all that is holy PLEASE DON'T DO IT.

[Geisthander]

I suppose on top of not having a lot of love for or getting a lot of use out of generative algorithms*, I simply do not see the point of it.  Integrated search was a fine idea because it streamlined the process of connecting to a search engine, but what is gained from having a hard-coded connection to a third-party service which exists largely to give approximate answers in something approximating a human diction?  I suppose it streamlines the task of finding one of those algorithms' interfaces, but then what?

*(on top of their deleterious effect on the environment and the immoral ways in which their data is acquired [unless, I concede, your morality is "make my project seem more miraculous and important while not paying people despite how necessary their output is to my project"])

This is not like thinking "hm, how many people live in New York City", typing in "population new york city" and clicking through six pages of generated chaff (not Mozilla's fault, that) to find the wikipedia page for New York City which lists the population.  This would be wondering the same thing, asking "what is the population of new york city?" and getting a response which might inform you that Frank Population (inventor of population measurement at Mars University) recently said that the population rating of New York City was 1 Population, which is roughly equal to 350,000 people.

Of course, I know of people who find access to various generative algorithms to be invaluable to their creative processes so maybe this will be a boon to them as a particularly interesting tech toy.

But even if it were merely a toy or merely useless for any practical information-gathering use, and leaving aside the issues with how the datasets are created and the computational power necessary to generate its answers, I suppose that would be one thing.  But even if the services being used were utterly benign in their production and environmental impact (or at least no worse than any of us), there's no reason to believe it will adhere to the kinds of security and privacy standards Mozilla is known for.  No matter how private the different services might protest to be, they might well be lying (there is precedent) OR, if they are being truthful, there's no guarantee they won't flip that script later on because nobody outside of the relatively small groups of people who control it can exert meaningful agency over it.  Much like me and Mozilla, being honest.  Yet here I am anyway.

Given Mozilla's much-storied history of taking privacy concerns seriously, it's at least a little worrying to see how lackadasical the organization seems to be about all this.  It's hard not to be a little bit paranoid that Mozilla, by connecting themselves to organizations which can only exist by copying data without concerning themselves about permission, might be in on that kind of thing, too.  I'm not saying that absolutely has to be the case, but my goodness it's hard not to be at least a little anxious about it.

I understand and appreciate that this "Nightly" function is, at present, an optional feature but that kind of feature creep is a known thing and "opt-in" pretty quickly becomes "opt-out", which pretty quickly becomes "we'll only do it a little even if you tell us you don't want us to do it at all".  Slippery slope argument logical fallacy whatever, that is a trajectory we've seen many a tech organization swing and I really don't want that for Mozilla.

[ariasuni]

It’s becoming increasingly hard to promote Firefox as an alternative to Chrome or other browsers, when it’s in fact driven by the same rotten corporate profit mindset.

How can anyone believe you’re still trying to live by your values when you’re featuring LLMs, a technology that’s known to be unreliable, to be responsible for the vast amount of autogenerated spam that made the web such a dump these last few years, to only exist by the exploitation of workers in other countries and by the sacrifice of resources so great it made the tech industry back on the track of making this planet unlivable for us.

You can see the distress of most people expressing themselves here, seeing that the only big browser which is supposed to be ethical is in fact going downhill in the same dystopian direction as the other big browsers.

Can Firefox embody hope again, or will this nightmare continue endlessly? Wake up before it’s too late.

[ninanauni]

AI will not "improve" Firefox. It will make your browser unreliable and besieged by misinformation. Please, don't be yet another company shoving AI down its users' throats.

[SnyderMan37]

Hey, respectfully, can we not?

[kyradev]

Why would I want you to make Firefox worse?

Current commercial ML systems are technology that's been misused to create products that effectively just charge rent on all available human knowledge, then deliver it as a useless homogenate with nearly random contents.

If people want to not do their email job, or want to scam creative clients or the gullible, they can already use Firefox for that by using it to access one of the systems you've decided to embed into the browser like so much lead shrapnel.

Just because some of your big sponsors want you to jump on every one of their ill-conceived fads, does not mean you don't have a responsibility to your actual users.

The fact Firefox is currently the best general purpose browser is not a compliment to Mozilla, it's a grim demonstration of how dystopian our world is.

[vanyok]

Great improvement, thank you for it. I've been waiting for months for Mozilla to include such a thing in Firefox.

It basically adds just a web page view in a sideboard, and some predefined prompt scripts in the pop-up menu, but that's already helpful. Side panel is to be used for exactly these kind of integrations.

I would propose to implement a possibility to add custom AI tools (same way as we add custom search engines): I would probably add myself DuckDuckGo AI chat, or Notion AI, or something else (maybe Mozilla AI when it comes). It will give more flexibility. And as it's just a separate website - should be no issues.

Thanks again and good luck!

[tacorat]

no thank you

[StarMoonchild]

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NOT Y'ALL TOO. DON'T DO IT. I DON'T CARE IF ITS OPTIONAL IT'S AWFUL FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND ITS A PLAGIARISM MACHINE. STOP IT.

[nicolaspadigone]

Do NOT do anything with AI in the Firefox browser. Please don't do it. Please. Leave that AI crap alone. Please.

[Noirwhal]

Do not do this. AI has become a scourge on technology. I can't replace my phone, because the new models are swarming with AI. If I type more than three words into an Instagram message, I get asked if I want to use AI to reply to my friends. Mozilla has earned a reputation for being a last bastion against predatory tech companies. Do NOT throw that away chasing after AI dreams and wishes. We all see this crap for what it is, and it's already fading. And that's not even getting into how much of an environmental disaster it is. In every sense of the words, AI is not worth it. So don't. 

[Semiramis]

AI has consistently failed to provide anything but a worse user experience and increasingly unreliable information across every platform and program I've encountered it on. Please don't do this.

[ada1]

Absolutely no A.I. It's already made google close to useless, and it's not even good at giving summaries. It frequently gives wrong information to the point where foragers relying on it have died because A.I wrongly identified mushrooms.

[Beanface42]

Well, it's tragically comic. 

[nickwedig]

Ugh. This is a terrible idea, and I'll have to look for a different web browser to use, then, one that doesn't integrate stupid and evil technology like LLMs despite their user base strongly opposing it.

[aCanuck]

Don't do this. I'd hate to have to abandon Firefox for this nonsense.

[jkbockstael]

I remember a time when Mozilla was a counter-power that worked hard to put people first. Remember the manifesto? Some of us do, and we are disappointed to see Mozilla jumping on yet another Silicon Valley bandwagon.

We want a non-profit that provides a privacy-first standards-first Web browser, along with information and tools to empower people so they can themselves shape the Web (that's in that manifesto you seem to have forgotten about, by the way). We want a large and strong non-profit that can save the Web and its open standards from the hands of the likes of Google or Microsoft. What we don't want is yet another pivot to "AI".

[Razzle]

No. Absolutely not. Generative AI is a fat stack of wasteful, unethical garbage. I've supported Firefox for a long time but I will drop it like a flaming turd if AI gets added, and I will tell all my family and friends to do the same. I am DEEPLY disappointed in Mozilla for even considering this, aren't you guys supposed to be the privacy-focused browser?? How are you forgetting that?

[mika]

Please don't. AI does nothing. It's literally just glorified applied statistics. It's redundant, if not blatantly dumb. Don't do it please.

[umbrus]

I am skeptical. If there is a way to remove it and prevent any of it from being displayed, I suppose I don't actually mind that much: You're just providing access to these tools which people would use anyway. But if some box or icon still remains after turning it off, yeah, no. I have no intention of using this, and I don't want it to clutter my screen.

[avidreaderetc]

Please don't. The creation of AI is **bleep**. The running of AI is **bleep**. The use of AI is **bleep**. AI is a fad that will fade, because it sucks so bad. Why do you think people use Firefox? To get away from all the **bleep** the other browsers are doing. If you want to keep your userbase and keep being a refuge for those who are fleeing from AI bull**bleep**, then keep AI out of it. Don't just jump on the bandwagon because it /seems/ good. That wagon is about to fall apart and no one actually wants to be on it anyway.

[Creataria]

Don't want it. End of. I'm one of the users that actually pays for some of your services, but I don't do so for you to use implement more AI. I'll be moving away from Mozilla if this is the trend moving forward.

[une4s]

AI en**bleep**tifies everything it touches. Please do not ruin the only good browser left.

[caldera32]

Honestly disgusted that Mozilla would even consider going this way, especially so late in the game. Haven't you seen everyone else's "AI" causing problems for users and companies? Heard the outcry over privacy and theft? Seen the disastrous numbers for environmental impact?

I believed in Mozilla, to the point of paying for the VPN just to support you guys, and have been using Firefox almost from the start but this will make me switch if it comes to fruition.

[Kolyenka]

DO NOT. 

[Glaurung]

No.  Do not want.  Do not want plagiarism machine in my browser, do not want BS generator in my browser. Please stop following the mindless tech herd. 

[sweetgrease]

Not a feature I want, need, or recommend to anyone or anything. I feel this feature would just bloat my searchbar, not to mention it negates the purpose of having a search browser in the first place. This would not be a good investment of time or money and I feel that most of the Firefox userbase can agree--at least on a small scale--that the reason they use the Firefox browser is the browser's renowned refusal to cater to trends and advertisers in the interest of preserving the user's experience and patience. Don't make this AI mistake--because it will be a mistake.

[SynCallio]

Please don't! It doesn't add any value to anything.

[cervine_online]

do you want to be microsoft edge? Stop

[unforth]

Please, I am begging you, do not add generative AI or AI answering features to Firefox. If you absolutely feel you must, please make them incredibly easy to deactivate and guarantee they're not tracking keystrokes or anything insane like that.

[RomeoRomeoTango]

I don't want AI anywhere near my Firefox, thank you very much.

[casualfruit]

Please do not do this. I am so sick of AI being everywhere. It is actively degrading the internet and in many ways information as a whole. 

Not to mention the fact that it takes SO MUCH ENERGY AND WATER to run these programs. This summer ChatGPT was maxing out energy grids while people were told to turn down their AC and use less water. If you care about being environmentally conscious, you MUST avoid integrating unnecessary AI programs into Firefox. 

[thomasm]

I just learned about LibreWolf thanks to this AI "experiment," please don't drive me away with any more embracing of AI.

[kenmarable]

I already switched from Chrome to Firefox because of Google's misguided AI plans. If Mozilla continues down this path, I will happily find another web browser.

Are you able to provide evidence to any of the following:

1. Was the data used in the training of these AI services acquired ethically?
2. Are the responses actually accurate, especially when it comes to areas where there can be significant harm from misinformation?
3. What is the energy consumption of the AI services Mozilla is looking to provide easy access to?
4. In training and improving the AI services, are workers paid fairly, or is it the "sweatshop" style over seas companies AI services typically use?

Without adequate answers to all of these, Mozilla will be guilty of jumping on the same unethical, destructive, money chasing bandwagon that so many other tech companies are burning billions on. The AI bubble is going to burst, and the damage to our economy from their short sighted races to outdo each other is going to be massive. Only bright side is it might thankfully happen soon enough that the environmental damage will not be as severe.

This is a terrible path to begin down. Be better.