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!

[JumboDS64]

No on principle. No genAI. I use Librewolf, which IIRC is based on Firefox, and I don't want this kind of bull**bleep** to trickle down to me.

[dhasenan]

The Mozilla manifesto (emphasis mine):

Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent.

How does this square with making LLMs more accessible when they tell people to eat glue and do other dangerous things on the regular? This is a clear reduction in safety.

[samalanders]

I understand that there's hype around putting AI in your stuff, but I really think that it would be detrimental if anything to use AI like chat GPT that can't site sources and encouraging people to potentially use that instead of an actually reliable source. As someone who has been using Firefox for a while now, I would ask that AI is not integrated into it in this way.

[vee1]

hi! please don't add any AI functions! thank you!

[Erufin]

NO, please don't add AI to Firefox. Just don't do it. People don't want it and don't use it. Especially since a huge part of your userbase chose Firefox as an alternative to other browsers because they hate what these browsers are doing. Please don't go in the same direction as them.

[lemollie]

I would stop using Firefox in its entirety if any AI functionality, no matter if it is optional, is added.

[Nemotaku]

NO. I will use any fork that don't have any AI BS in it. Stop.

[FoolishOwl]

So-called "generative AI" is an ecological disaster. It endangers lives by displacing hard-won truth with nonsense, and it threatens to destroy fifty years of accumulated culture and knowledge by burying it in garbage. Where there is any thought put into the deployment of "generative AI", the intent is to force experts and creative people to accept starvation wages.

It is an absolute outrage that Mozilla has even considered engaging with "generative AI".

[InsanelyADD]

Do NOT do this. AI slop is a trash fad tech companies want to force on the general public so they can squeeze more money out of people.

[Annie]

Please do not. Having something without generative AI is amazing. And the controversy about stolen content is not something to get involved with. Also the environmental implications/damages are to grand for it to be worth it.

[Hydraheadhunter]

I despise what has been over-hyped as so-called "AI" and I go out of my way to avoid it.

I block people who use it in their posts on social media.

I uninstall and refund software purchases if that software integrates "AI" that I cannot opt out off.

I use the manually selected MS paint version 11.2308.30.0 specifically because it is the newest version of the program available to me that does not include the 'AI-driven' co-creator feature tacked on.

I maintain a blacklist.txt of companies that will never receive my money or business ever again, and the only thing that will get a company added to that list faster than having a bad stance on so-called AI usage is being named by BDS as the target of a forever boycott.

I do not like AI, and not in the Sam Iamb's sense; no, my distaste for them is not so shallow as to come from belligerent naïveté.

I need you to understand that when I say I despise AI, it is because I have a full, well-rounded, and nuanced knowledge of what they are, how they are built, how they function, and what they they do. I know every fibre in their warp and weft, and I do not like it. The metaphorical green eggs and ham are green 'cause they were taken by the fungus. I want the current lot of 'em regulated into oblivion, and the next lot regulated into passing a god-damned ethics board's review.

So.

Thank you very much for making this feature explicitly opt in. I really appreciate you sparing me having to go through the trouble of opting out of this over-hyped nonsense for the *Check Blacklist.txt* at least twenty-seventh time this year.

If ever I need to opt out, I will do so, but duely note, I will be very cross about it; cross enough to look for an alternative browser to this, the browser I'm already using as an alternative to chrome.

[kateryo]

Not even if you paid me. AI being used to help detect cancer early? Perfect. I have no beef with that. AI in the way that it keeps being shoved down our throats everywhere on the Internet? That needs to go die in a fire.

[Zenith_Prism]

Honestly ai is already disruptive enough on the internet nowadays, with it even reaching irl, with various sources already studying the harm it causes to the environment. This feature is not a good idea.
Adding this even as an experiment to firefox would only cause problems, from annoying the user base here that most of clearly evade it's use as much as possible, to just cluttering what is a perfectly well done browser; simple and a better alternative to everything else in the market right now.
(And as an digital artist using this browser instead of others due to generative ais stealing pieces, i might need to start looking for a different browser if this is implemented in any capacity.)

[LizLuvsCupcakes]

Absolutely not. NO. We have to get extensions to REMOVE ai features, why would you think that was a good idea?

[lucideer]

To add some extra context to the many people here saying a very loud "NO" to this:

1. It doesn't matter if the feature is optional & opt-in

2. It doesn't matter if the feature is limited to "privacy-preserving" AI alternatives.

What matters here is that Mozilla & the Firefox team is loudly stating publicly "We support AI & believe in this technology". Given the environmental impact of AI, as well as the mass international creative robbery the tech has been built upon, this is a clear statement of Mozilla's lack of ethics, which greatly erodes trust. It demonstrates that the Firefox project no longer stands for what it once stood for.

It's also telling the top two integrations listes are OpenAI & Google Gemini - so there's really no question on where Mozilla's ethics lie.

[rhinopotamus]

No. What? No. Gtfo.

[DeaExMachina]

Absolutely not. I have yet to see any use of AI that actually benefited either me or society at large, and have seen hundreds of ways that it is making the world and my life worse. It actively angers me now wherever I see it. Don’t put AI in yet another place where it is unnecessary and unwanted.

[CrystalineGeode]

I believe adding AI to Firefox is a very surefire way to lose users.

[Cascadiarch]

holy **bleep**, no?? If you guys put anything AI-related at all in the official build, I'll immediately turn off updates and start holding out for the non-AI alternative to be inevitably developed

[Guggs]

It would be nice if pressing Enter automatically sent our currently typed message to the bot instead of adding a new line (like Shift+Enter normally does). Right now you have to manually click the "Send" button next to the text field to send every message in the sidebar.

[krapo]

What are you thinking ? AI is hell and must be stopped

[Mordalo]

AI (or Machine Learning) has been around for some time, but it's just the latest "buzzword".  It's something the desperate are using to try and keep relevant.  I chose Firefox WAY back when in the Netscape days because it was different.

Firefox does not need AI.  Firefox needs to continue to keep on with what works and not succumb to whatever the latest fad is. 

Keep Firefox free from AI, and if you try and force it on us, someone somewhere will find a way to disable it.

[emc13]

Please do not put any sort of AI in Firefox. Part of the reason I use Firefox is to AVOID all the AI nonsense that's popping up everywhere.

[Cascadiarch]

holy **bleep**, no?? The second you guys add anything AI-related to the official build of Firefox is the second I turn off updates and start holding out for the non-AI alternative to be inevitably developed

[sylvietttee]

absolutely not. have you lost your mind?

[PhotonQyv]

No thanks, if I wanted 'AI' in my web browser I'd be using Chrome.

[lcwebsxoxo]

Are you insane? No! Literally nobody wants this.

[Quackles]

This is not a useful experiment. AI is an underbaked technology that provides inaccurate (but plausible-sounding!) information, and there is no sign of the accuracy improving.

Please spend more time providing useful features for Firefox (I would suggest adding a built-in ad blocker) and less time chasing technological hype.

[enjolras14]

No -- please do not add this feature.

Every other service I use is integrating AI, including all search engines. There is no earthly reason it should be browser-integrated except to jump on the bandwagon. Please, just don't. What would I use the AI for as an actual element of my browser?

Please, Mozilla, be the one place online that I can be free from this destructive ecocidal copyright-infringing job-destroying hype. The people who value your work are the same people who understand tech well enough to know that this is going nowhere, and that there is zero reason for AI to be a built-in functionality of the browser itself, when it's already being added to search engines, websites, and the computers themselves.

[Erynn]

Save yourself the work and just don't. Spend your money on something useful.

[cory_]

Keep this far away from me. The fact that you are testing adding AI to Firefox is a breach of trust already. It looks like I should start looking for an alternative browser whose maintainers aren't looking for ways to plug me into the plagiarism machine.

[wreckitremy]

No AI

[piersb]

No.

[Lexxy_Fox_2]

Duck off with the ducking "AI" you ducks! Nobody wants your mitty s py ware!

BE A BROWSER. (Re-)add PWA support! Add JPEG support! How about vertical tabs? How about any of the top 100 ideas on https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/idb-p/ideas/tab/most-kudoed ?

I've since switched to web browser that has JPEG support, and PWA, and vertical tabs, and split pane, &c, &c. And I'm also not against Actual-AI. But that's not what we're talking about here. You, Mozilla, have since spat in our collective faces and are denying us the good future. Duck you Mozilla.

To the real (non-"AI" "people" here): Stop using Mozilla! Just stop! There are actual, real browsers that let you browse the Internet! For free! I can't list them here because [redacted] but go find them. Support their developers. Please.

[semachthemonkey]

Oh dear god, No. Just No. Please realise what harm this AI crap is doing and that the reason so many of us use Firefox is because we want a clean alternative to the big alternatives out there.

[fire-fira]

No thanks to any of it. Generative AI is absolutely NOT a reliable source of information, it's built on the fallibility of people with none of our capacity for critical thinking or fact-checking, and the environmental costs in terms of the water waste required to keep AI systems running is staggering. I don't want it. We're honestly better off without it.

[Justificand]

If AI is integrated into Firefox in any way I shall do my research and find a comparable browser that respects my privacy and the data of others and does not engage with Generative AI, crypto, scraping, etc in any way.

A decision like this betrays the idea of privacy and security at its core.

Nobody wants something that lies to you and uses stolen data

[jmhnsn]

No. Please. Just don't.

[memarquette16]

I would look for another browser if you implemented ai features in Firefox.

[Jo_the_hat]

Nope. Nein. No, thank you.