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!

[coepi]

I think most of my feelings have been covered already by other people, but just to reiterate: this is an incredibly stupid and harmful idea. Drop it, or I'm leaving Firefox - and I'm far from alone in saying that.

[nonetrix1]

Ollama would be great, not completely hostile to this idea but I would like to run the AI locally personally. If I was really nitpicky prefer it to be opt-in and a extension instead, but adding Ollama support so I can use my GPU would be enough

[lackey]

Isn't it funny that Mozilla actually hid the "local" option when they pushed this experiment to the default branch? Some things (OpenAI and Google) are more important than others

[pastadough]

this is unfathomably stupid. firefox has as a whole been built by catering to people who explicitly despise having their data scraped to be shovelled into algorithms, weather its advertisement ones, tracking ones, or both rolled into one and made 17x as enviornmentally harmful that we now call "artifical intellegence". literally **bleep**ing 0 of the userbase of firefox wants this. you have to be so **bleep**ing out of touch to think for even a seccond this would be recieved well. yeah man. **bleep** over ur entire stupid browser to further support a morally unethical, enviornmentally harmful, completely **bleep**ing useless feature. yeah. ok.

[MulaSaWala]

I hope you do not do this, because one of the reasons Firefox is my preferred web browser is that it does not / has fewer of these AI integrations that I find irritating and not useful to me at all.

Given your user demographic, I think this would be a terrible idea. Literally created this account to say no no thank you please

[RivenRose]

Please don't do it, the main reason I use Firefox is because I'm sick of the rampant AI on Google

[elliesayshi]

Please don't add AI features to Firefox, there are so many other places to get AI and it's getting harder to find places that aren't affected by AI. Please keep Firefox one of those places.

[byblix]

Please no. AI is not a useful feature; it is not helpful for spellchecking, fact-finding, or even auto-completing responses. This is because AI is not actually "intelligent," it's just offering the statistically most likely output. And especially for a model trained on data that is pulled from wherever it can, that isn't properly sourced or curated to apply to specific lines of inquiry, the "statistically most likely" answer to a question is often a link to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."

This isn't even touching on the environmental impact of churning through all that data for each response. Or the privacy concerns of how that data is gathered, considering the "update" that offers AI as a choice is almost always followed by a forceful integration that gives the AI features permission to access everything on the user's device. AI is spyware wrapped in a shiny layer of convenience, except even the convenient aspects are unreliable at best.

I have recommended Firefox to people for years, pointing to its focus on user customization, protections, and privacy. Adding AI to Firefox is certainly not the decision I would have expected. I hope it is reversed soon. I would be honestly saddened to give it up. But AI is a feature I emphatically do not want. I have seen too many websites and services begin with "you can opt-out" only to follow with "actually, you can't opt-out anymore" to trust a supposedly voluntary feature will remain so.

[Milly]

Don’t make it default, and keep it optional. Or better yet, just don’t. You will appeal to users who don’t want AI forced on them. This survey may give you an idea of the size of that market.

[Artisan]

need a shortcut key to open/close the sidebar, currently none are assigned, a choice to bind it to a key would be extremely handy to keep the sidebar closed when not in use, bit annoying to have to use alt, arrow keys etc to get it to open again when i close it. Needs an automatic hide/grow feature too

[Canadian_Nat]

Please don't do this, Mozilla! I've been faithfully using your Firefox browser since the early 2000s and always recommend it to others as a better alternative. AI is a scourge. It is environmentally irresponsible and destructive and also has serious privacy and plagiarism issues.  

[aurora2]

**bleep** off

[fluhus]

Love the new AI integration! The prompt, however, doesn't work well with Gemini. For example: https://g.co/gemini/share/ae8317819212

It would be helpful if we could edit the prompt templates (and maybe add our own).

As long as the feature is optional and is off by default, I don't see why it should pose a privacy/security risk. Let AI lovers have their favorite AI easily accessible, and let AI haters be free and safe from AI as they wish.

[amylikesdrwhoo]

I'm so tired please dont

[Tooter]

Hey, literally made a profile just to say, please god no. 

Y'all have been at the forefront of normalcy when it comes to browsers for half a decade, at least. AI integration is not the way to continue that trend. Just look at Googles forced integration of Gemini, can you honestly tell me of any person that willingly uses it?

In the end it's will be a waste of development time, resources, and good graces to add something no one particularly wants. If someone is in desperate need to have an AI from their browsing experience they can use the other 13 ones that do, Firefox does not need to become the 14th.

[lizardcat_ana]

i don't feel like ai, even if fully optional, would add anything to the browser, and it is of my belief it would simply make it compliant in a meaningless fad that harms the wider world.

[AprilBundoll]

Absolutely no. Awful idea. Why not start selling nfts next,  that'd achieve the same effect of ruining the goodwill you've accumulated so far.

[Betwixtyiff]

Generative AI is nothing short of a drain on computational resources and I can't think of a single argument as to why it should be implemented, so I very much hope it isn't here.

[mltnslg]

One of, if not the main reasons I use Firefox as my browser both on mobile and desktop is because it does not have features like ai integration as I find they obfuscate the search results I am looking for more often than not. You have a simple and effective system that I feel would only be hurt by such inclusions, wether central or optional. And I ask that you please avoid disrupting that selling point.

[Umi]

We do not want this. AI integration is a harmful way of spreading misinformation, replaces important man-made programming from the browser and uses up much more energy than the already very energy consuming standard browser. AI integration as an automatic feature is a bad idea

[uid65534]

I really don't understand why everyone kneejerked so hard against this when it is currently only opt-in, and I would expect it to remain that way by default. The wide selection of model API endpoints is also excellent, as would be the ability to use local LLMs.

I for one would like to have the ability to be able to use loaded tabs as context for certain AI chats, that would be a great integration.

For everyone that would rather instead panic about "the big bad AI", you can keep it off. Nobody is forcing you to use this feature.

[Playnetty]

Please for the love of all that is holy do not waste your time with that hot garbage, AI algorithms have no idea what they're talking about, they just slap letters together in a way some vastly underpaid foreign slave-wage worker marks as "looking like a vaguely appropriately coherent sentence".  Any semblance of competence in these programs is sheer luck; they're utterly incapable of anything resembling true thought and will provide no worthwhile service to anyone.

[Bbmaec]

Please please please no Ai, it is virtually useless and ethically abhorrent to me. I don't want to stop using Mozilla don't make me, please.

[thisisanerror]

If I wanted an AI tool I would literally use any other mess of a browser. I don't want it on Firefox as well.

[RoseReggie]

Please don’t. If you do please make it something people can choose to opt in to instead of just rolling it out to everyone at once

[Gothicwitch]

No Thank you AI

[Krissaegrim]

**bleep** No.

[Krissaegrim]

Mozilla I would literally rather pay 10 dollars every month to use Firefox than have ANY kind of AI integration.

[Amazionion]

Please do not integrate it.

If someone is forcing you to make this feature, gun to your head, then for the love of everything it is, like.... an approved extension that needs to be manually put in?

[CaptainZander]

get rid of it. No one wants this garbage AI shoved into our faces constantly

[Baguettelol]

Please don't

[ATrout_In_Jorts]

I specifically use Firefox BECAUSE of the comparative anonymity it gives me on the internet compared with other browsers. Putting AI in it will make me think that EVEN MORE of my data's secretly being scraped to train the models without my consent. If this actually happens, I'd definitely switch to another browser that doesn't integrate it.

Besides, generative AI's a bubble anyway since the technologies it provides doesn't produce any additional value than it takes to put in. That's just the nature of theft. The more steps the line is between labor to product, the less utility the end result will have. This kind of AI's already infamous for producing subpar goods in the public eye anyway, so the only profit to be gained by such a move would end up sabotaging Mozilla's ability to sustainably create steady long-term gains just for the sake of one short-term harvest. I suspect the executives pushing this technology are just looking to suck whatever money there is out of the company and move onto the next cash cow.

If you want this company to grow in competition with Google, Apple, and Microsoft, you won't stand out by blending in the crowd. Don't do what they are just because it's popular. Their services are already in the late stages of en**bleep**tification, so you can be the diamond among the **bleep**. Focus on providing on what your customers actually want like reliable privacy, accessibility, customization, and quality-of-life features. That will prove to be a much stabler business model than trying to entice an annoyed public with a shiny new toy that they'll grow bored of after a couple months. And when this corporation eventually starts **bleep**tifying its own technology too, you could use your new profits to get the mob to blow up Google's secret bank accounts in Delaware or something. (That was a joke.)

So yeah, my vote is NO on integrating generative AI into Firefox in any capacity.

[nimeve]

It is abundantly clear that the vast majority of people do not want this. As many others have said, I have been using Firefox to get away from nonsense like this from companies who do not care about their user base, only their data and ad revenue. If these features are added, I will be looking for an alternative browser.

[TPC]

Please leave it out.

We dont want it, and if we did we can add it ourselves.

[tsarnicky]

AI is not for Firefox

[ShenMuxing]

This idea is great, but it could be further enhanced by integrating more closely with web pages: for example, on certain pages (such as Overleaf[www.overleaf.com]), users could actively grant the page an autocomplete function. As users type, the AI could automatically suggest completions, and users could decide whether to accept the suggestions by pressing the `Tab` key or `ctrl+->` key. This would significantly speed up input on the browser, greatly enhancing the user experience!

[CyberneticFlesh]

Stop wasting time implementing useless features detrimental to the environment. Hard no on this one.

[FriedPipis]

The environmental impact is exaggerated.
https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2024/08/18/is-ai-eating-all-the-energy-part-1-of-2/

[tuxayo]

That article doesn't seems to go in that direction.

> For the most part, the energy issues are caused by the AI “arms race” and how irresponsibly corporations are pushing their AI products on the market. Even with operational efficiency ruled out as a cause, AI is causing two killer energy problems: waste and externalities.

> It’s simply not true that the technology behind AI is particularly energy-intensive. The technology isn’t insatiable, the corporations deploying it are. The thing with an insatiable appetite for growth at all cost is unregulated capitalism.

We are here in the arms race and irresponsible push to AI for everything. The environmental impact is acknowledged.
We can send that article to someone blaming someone else for using an LLM (like chatgpt) but it's doesn't look relevant in the context of mozilla.

[nadg]

Long time user but I just subscribed to say this: please don't. AI is shoved in our face all the time nowadays and it's very uncomfortable. Plus it as dubious ethical implications, a tendency to be wrong about important details, and a very very high energy cost.
Don't do that please.

Thanks for asking beforehand tho, much appreciated.