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!

[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.

[tilwiti]

@asafkoбудь ласка, допоможіть з цим штормом, люди налякані 😳

[Ada2]

Not falling into the AI cesspool is the main reason I still use Firefox. ***Please*** do not add this

[sfox37]

No, please use resources for other (actual) browser improvements.

[Panda]

Not wanted

[rudyblackbyrd]

Nope! AI is incredibly harmful to the environment and after seeing the garbage that's been pumping into the internet via AI makes it way too hard to get excited about it. Have you seen the screenshots of nonsense google answers from AI? No thanks, I'm good on that. The reason I use, love and tell other people to use firefox is specifically because they don't operate like Google. Please don't do AI!

[daybringersol]

Nobody actually wants AI except corporations who don’t want their investments to go to waste. Those are my thoughts on it. Please keep Firefox an refuge from this **bleep**.

[zorrito]

Please remove the feature. At this time, AI only serves to spread misinformation more quickly than humans can, or to plagiarize and steal to works of others. Perhaps one day [after many regulations] it can actually be used to help people, but for now its best to shelve it. Signed, a tired illustrator and librarian

[keypup]

if ai gets implemented into firefox i will uninstall it on every device and find an alternative within 1 day. do not screw over your users with this

[Mindcool24]

Adding an AI button to Firefox is a poor choice. On the very surface, an AI button should not be a browser feature. That is within addon territory. Past that, I have no use for an AI chat bot. I haven't used one since I first tried on a year or so ago, and I haven't touched them since. I find the addition of AI products a blatant attempt to capitalize on the current trend of AI, and Firefox should not go in that direction. I do not want that software included in the browser I use, even if it can be turned off. This is a waste of time for the Firefox developers that could be put into creating more useful features that don't rely on other companies to work, such as security or optimization. The argument that it can just put turned off is a moot point, as the feature is still embedded in the browser, and thus is taking up space on my hard drive, and is still contributing to the disaster that is AI. The whole AI craze is similar to the machine learning craze, and before that, the so called "Big Data" craze. It is another piece of technology that is being shoehorned into products that never needed it, or actively make that product worse. Don't let Firefox be added to that list of products polluted by AI.

[wow]

After enabling AI chatbot function, when I am selecting a sentence from the webpage, I notice a small pop-up, which contains 3 possible queries I can make about the sentence. Is it possible to customize my query?

[Ambsace]

Adding my voice to the chorus of No, do not do AI integration.

[Kyra]

Reading through these comments, you'll notice a complete lack of real responses from employees. Mozilla does not care, this is ens***ification creeping into firefox. You know, good old late stage capitalism.

[Quinmael]

In the most polite way: **bleep**ING NO WAY, PLEASE DON'T.
Keep AI away from Firefox's code, please.

[nichirinbullets]

Just know that the main reason why many users chose Mozilla in the first place was due to the lack of AI. You'll lose a good chunk of your userbase by proceeding with these changes. 

[RattyTatTat]

The fact that they're even considering this, coupled with the fact that they their employees are only replying to yes-men shows that they don't really care. I guess Firefox considers us less "users" and more "consumers" by now. At best they'll let you turn it off, after every single update.

[ShenMuxing]

Wow, so many people don't like this. But this functions is important for a AI-age app. You can take a look at monica plugin on Google Chrome. Maybe it can be changed to an official add-on on Firefox store if many people consider performance problem.

[GnomiBee]

I really enjoy the current version of Firefox and would NOT want an AI feature added

[thexmeta]

unbelievable people that dont want AI in the browser in a such enormous growing AI century. Just dont use it if you are against it, thats all. Also you can turn the feature off or not even turn it on. Come on use your brains like turning on/off a feature like "check spelling". it is not even a privacy issue.

[Amai-vos]

IMO, AI is great, just insufficient in value to offset how bad their respective parent companies' reputations are about their handling of user data. So I must preface this post by saying that AI integration is, maybe, not the best choice for Firefox *as a product*, at least from my perspective as a one of its' users.

An approach that would be more aligned to the principles of the browser would be to just add an API endpoint for AI-related "merde" and accept payment from whoever wants to be the default choice of provider for that, like you folks did with search engines. This way, whichever company cares enough about this can just pay to be the default one and we- who would never even consider using their services in the first place- can just move on with our lives; Granted, of course, that this default wouldn't be "default on" (which, given the operating costs of AI, shouldn't even be on the table in the foreseeable future).

So I suggest phrasing and dealing with this less like "AI Integration" and more along the lines of "A new AI API, where you can plug in AI-related stuff".

This would have the benefit that one can simply plug in a private AI solution on that "AI slot". Although this is currently a very niche use case due to its' price, those solutions will eventually become commercially viable for a wider audience (As of right now, they are exorbitantly expensive, with around 80Gb+ of VRAM requirements just for the cheapest ones).

By following this suggestion and making something one would call "an AI API", not "an AI integration", not only would we stand to have a much more mature "AI API" if and when the core Firefox user-base would ever begin to consider really using it, but we would also decrease the public association of Mozilla with these info-grabby AI companies as a whole, which it shouldn't want to have many of in the first place, given its user-base (That is, assuming we are mostly made up by people concerned with privacy and online safety). AI is kind of a charged keyword right now, for better or worse. And it will likely continue being so for the whole decade to come.

Another thing is that AI is very expensive to run as of right now, with most of that cost being paid by the environment through the centralization of AI-related workloads. This is almost guaranteed not to be the case in the future. Once the absolutely superior customization, privacy and other advantages of privately run LLMs finally outweigh their upfront cost, only big companies will be left using AI "services". Since, let's be honest, those services are just intrinsically expensive to everyone involved, one way or another.

Wrapping up:

My vote goes on the yes basket. AI is currently a "merde", yes, but it may not be so forever. I think having an API for it already maturing even before AI has any value or use for most Firefox users is a W in my book.

You just need to remember to make a proper "AI API", not just a hook into the current commercially available services that provide it.

I believe AI is gonna get much better than it is now, at least in the short term. Even though AI *services* will just continue to decay in value until they fade into the history books. So, if you want, go for it. I'm cheering for you folks at Mozilla, as always.

P.S If you are concerned about the amount of "would"s and "could"s in this post, I guess that's just telling of the amount of optimism required to believe "AI integration" in Firefox would have a happy ending, whichever way we choose to call it 😛 But personally, I'm still on board with it and cheering for you folks. Good luck ahead, whatever you may choose.

- A newly authenticated member of the user-base, just for this post.

Tl;dr: YES

[shofarsogood]

Please don't do this. AI uses a ton of water and energy to work. It's not healthy for the environment. AI is unethical.

I really like using Firefox and I don't want it to go the way of Google Chrome.

[flightofthedvl]

I am not interested in a browser with ai. Having it in search results is bad enough and something that I have to work around. If AI was added to Firefox I would be upset and if it was not able to be turned off, I would find a new browser

[gabbethepro]

Cool idea. Could be done with some improvement as the only options are not very useful imo, but I see potential. Don't understand all hate against new technology, it is is a optional free feature. Perhaps the haters should go back to using bare html

[howl]

I cannot overemphasize how much no one wants AI services and AI assistants and suchlike on... anything. Not on browsers, not websites, not on apps, not anywhere. I'll be very disappointed if this goes through.

[celestialwound]

No AI in anything ever, TY. I hate it.

[blacklunar]

I am extremely against this. AI is prone to error, built off stolen material, and catastrophic for the environment. Please do not add AI to Firefox.

[MaxW391]

Please, no. 'AI' is not a useful feature - it merely generates things with no verification as to whether it is accurate. It also uses horrific amounts of energy and water at a time when climate change means these things need to be conserved.

[greenivy]

Please don't. I moved to Firefox because Google sucked, and now you're taking steps towards making Firefox more like Google.

[Swirly]

Booo!

[Onibull]

Every single thing I've used that has integrated ai has turned to absolute **bleep**, spredding misinformation, scams, and general bad results, please do not put this into firefox too.

It sucks that we can say no but someone else is rich and wants to steal from us and does it anyway.

It really **bleep**ing sucks that these dumbass machine learning machines are destroying the environment and water too and that all companies are going 'what if this gives us more money' and does it **bleep**ing anyway making it almost impossible to get away from.

[cutiexe]

Kudos on one point only: having an easy link to provide feedback. AI "features" are not useful and in fact are unwanted by the majority of Firefox users. Don't waste any more time, effort, or money on this feature.

[DysProg]

Could you just f*cking not? I thought Firefox was the browser that didn't do stupid trendy bull**bleep**. Why not add NFTs too if you're going to do this?

[Mumblebee7]

Take a good, long look at what people say about Chrome. Especially lately. 

That's what'll happen if you follow through with this. Yes, even with opt-out as default. 

In Earnest: DO. NOT.

[vermuepft]

no thank you, i don't want any ai chatbot or any similair ai hype thing, i wouldn't use it and it would make lessen my enjoyment of firefox

[arappathor]

As far as i can see, no one needs this. I just want a working browser, that is not chrome.

[Osnofa]

Trying to login to a chatbot doesn't work if I start with Proton VPN connected.

Only after disconnecting from the VPN would it allow me to log in.

Though, once I was logged in, it started working as a chatbot in my sidebar.

[Carolly]

I only just recently switched to Firefox because other companies won't stop integrating AI nonsense into their programs.

I swear to God if you continue with this I'm going to start using a command-line browser as the last option there is. Opposing the spread of the disease that is AI is a moral imperative, and one that Mozilla of all companies should understand and agree with.

[ndsheck]

Absolutely not. This is irresponsible and hypocritical.