Try out AI controls in Firefox (Nightly)

[stef]

Hi everyone 👋,

I’m Stefan, a PM on the Firefox team. We’ve talked a lot about building AI in Firefox in a way that puts users in control. Today, I wanted to share something new we’re testing that does just that, and get feedback: AI controls.

As AI-enhanced features show up in more places across Firefox, we’ve heard that you want clearer ways to understand what’s enabled and how to manage it. This feature is a step towards that. You can read more about the approach in our Distilled blog post. 

AI controls will be available to try later today in Firefox Nightly. We’re still actively working on it, so some details may change before this ships more broadly in Firefox 148 later this month.

What’s covered in AI controls today

From the AI controls page in Settings, you'll be able to manage the following AI-enhanced features:

• Translations – generative translation of webpage content
• Alt text in PDFs – generated image descriptions for improved accessibility
• AI-enhanced tab grouping – suggested group names and related tabs
• Link previews – AI-generated key points from a page before opening it
• AI chatbot in the sidebar – quick access to a selected chatbot (Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and more)

All features are optional, and you can choose a setup based on what works for you.

Blocking AI features

If you don’t want to use AI features at all, the Block AI enhancements toggle disables current and future AI features and suppresses prompts. You can always re-enable individual features if you want. 

Feedback we’re looking for

Your feedback from Nightly is especially valuable as we look to continually improve the AI controls over time:

• Is the settings UI clear, discoverable, and understandable without additional context?
• Do the controls behave the way you expect when you enable or block a feature? If not, what surprised you?
• Is anything missing that you expected to be configurable, or anything present that feels unnecessary?
• Have you encountered any bugs, glitches, or confusing edge cases? Please include steps to reproduce where possible.
• Does the language used in the UI clearly explain what each control does and what it affects?

Thanks for taking the time to try this out!
- Stef

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

I tested, among other, i tested, AI chatbot providers in sidebar, Blocked.
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/thanks-for-making-my-browser-from-firebird-0-4-to-firefox...

[Signez]

Hey there Stef! Great to discover that this feature (that is highly requested in my community) is at least being shipped.

My main frustration is with this "scare screen" that appear when we try to activate the kill switch. It really looks like the kind of tricks that the Big Tech companies pulls on us in their products, trying to make us think twice about doing something.

The setting is already buried in a specific tab in the settings page (something that I can understand), so, please, don't paternize me with a confirmation popup when I want to "block" those features. It not a destructive action and it's a dark pattern to do so. Thanks.

[Apollo_01]

That's already a step in the right direction.

But what exactly does ‘blocked’ mean? Is it just the functionality that is disabled, and I still get all the bloat of software that is necessary for the AI features? Or does it also mean that the frameworks required for the features are excluded from download or get deleted when I block it?

Because if the former is the case, it should rather be called ‘deactivated’, and I would then like to have an explicit option to completely remove the AI features from my Firefox on a software basis like I can uninstall extensions.

[stef]

Hey Apollo, thanks for the reply!  “Blocked” means more than just disabling a feature in the UI. If you previously used any of the on-device AI features and a local model was downloaded, blocking it will delete that model, clear any prior opt in state, and remove all related UI and entry points. The local AI models in the on-device features are not bundled with Firefox by default, they are only downloaded the first time you use the specific AI feature.

[samuelitooooo]

In terms of language, instead of turning "block AI enhancements" on, I'd rather turn "enable AI enhancements" off.

In addition, if turning "enable AI enhancements" off is a big kill switch, then all of the individual controls should disappear or be grayed out.

I do like that the big kill switch is all the way up top though, being the very first thing people see. Having "enable AI enhancements" off by default would be even better. And you can always use Firefox's "what's new" release notes as well as the onboarding flow to introduce people to the option to turn it on or off.

[stef]

Hey Samuelitooooo, thanks for the feedback. On the idea that a global block ai toggle should gray out or hide the individual feature controls, we intentionally kept those available to support more granular choice. Someone might want AI enhancements broadly blocked including future features, but still find a specific feature like Translations useful. Keeping the individual toggles visible lets people opt into a specific feature they explicitly want, rather than forcing an all or nothing decision.

[MyMozillaUser]

You don't seem to get it.

Give the user the option to disable/block/remove ALL so called "AI" garbage at once, if they prefer. If they prefer to use some, they'd just not disable everything, but "AI enabled" and choose the specific components they want.

[samuelitooooo]

It makes sense to have that granularity when the global "enable AI enhancements" is turned on. Even if people only want to use one feature out of all of them.

On the other hand, people who want absolutely nothing to do with AI will want the extra reassurance that AI is completely off. No doubts, no loopholes, nothing.

[PurpleRaccoon]

Genuinely, it should be defaulting to Block, and the confirmation should be for unblocking the 'enhancements' with information about how that affects a user's privacy.

[TechHorse]

stef, will turning off all AI features also clean up any local user data that has been stored by the AI components?

For example, any user usage history, or temporary working data?

I don't know if any of the AI components would store information that more privacy-focused users would not want to be left behind (such as records of websites visited, contents of websites, names of tab groups etc.), but if they do then this information would also need to be removed. Hence my query. Thanks.

[Tony2077]

Really appreciate this new functionality. So a big thanks to you, Firefox team. 💝

The functionality itself and the switches seem fine to me. Really like the explanation below every AI feature, with the links to help. The blog post and the video are very informative as well.

But I think the language used to label the switches could be improved:

• What's the difference between Available and Enabled? I would just expect either Enabled or Disabled.
• Rather than a Block AI enhancements switch disabled by default I would instead word this as AI features enabled by default. Using the word Block looks weird because implies that what is shipped with Firefox is bad and has to be blocked, as if they were ads.

[stef]

Hey Tony, Good question. “Available” just means the feature is visible so you can discover it and learn what it does, but it is not active yet. You still have to explicitly opt in before you can use it. “Enabled” means you have opted in, the feature can be used, and on first use the local model is downloaded. Nothing runs or downloads while a feature is only in the Available state.

[Tony2077]

Right, ok, I understand now. However, I find this granularity unnecessary. I think people are going to struggle to understand the difference between the two. And most importantly, why would we need to make this distinction at this point?

In my opinion, if the AI featured is enabled, whether the user has already opted in or downloaded the model is irrelevant. Users are going to argue that they are already opted in the moment the feature is available by default. Does this mean that if an IA feature is set back from Enabled to Available the consent will be removed and models will be erased? Why anyone would do this rather than simply disable the feature? The On-device AI tab on the Add-ons Manager already allows to remove models.

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

A test carried out, Available, Enabled, Blocked.

Block generative AI features with Firefox AI controls.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-ai-controls
Key points in link previews.

And compare with Settings > General > Browsing section.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-link-previews-firefox

[MyMozillaUser]

Hello,

This shows why "AI" should not have access to our browsers. Ever.

[nos1609]

Are NPUs supported as backend on Copilot+ PC's?
https://learn.microsoft.com/windows/windows-app-sdk/api/winrt/microsoft.windows.ai.text

[Agentvirtuel]

AI controls, a test carried out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAbmcs1wNwY

[myspace]

This is great news thanks! Quickly disabled all ai features minus the translations. 👍

[SayNo2Ai]

I do not want any AI on this browser. I've been using Firefox since probably around 2007 or 2008. This is what will probably make me jump ship to another browser. I actively boycott companies that use Ai.

[c0d3h4x0r]

Here's the way it should work:

Allow AI to collect and use data about my browsing activity: NO/YES

(defaults to NO; when "NO", all granular settings below are greyed out; when "YES", all granular settings below are not greyed out and default to "OFF")

Specific AI feature 1: OFF/ON

Specific AI feature 2: OFF/ON

Specific AI feature 3: OFF/ON

[Alarm-Siren]

As I understand it, the actual functionality of the "Block AI Enhancements" toggle is not to disable AI features in-and-of-itself, but rather to change the default state of current and future AI functions. In other words, if Block AI Enhancements is "off", then when a new AI feature is added this will be "Available" by default, including new UI elements and pop-ups to introduce the feature. If Block AI Enhancements is "on", the browser will always set new AI features to Blocked by default and never show UI elements or pop-ups related to them unless the user explicitly enables that particular AI feature.

Further, this toggle is completely seperate to turning a given AI feature on/off/available - it affects the default state of a feature, not the state a user has set themselves.

Whilst I have understood what you're going for, and I agree it gives more flexibility, I think this UI is unintuitive - already several people above have questioned why this toggle doesn't just blanket turn everything off and grey out all the boxes, and I agree with them that would be what I would expect from the wording as presented.

I suggest that instead of the current wording:

Block AI enhancements [On | Off]
Blocking means you won't see new or current AI enhancements in Firefox, or pop-ups about them.

you could go with something like

Default AI enhancement state [Available | Blocked]
When the default AI enhancement state is set to Available, new AI features will be shown to you when they become available so that you can choose to use them or not. Alternatively, when the default AI enhancement state is set to Blocked, new AI features will be disabled by default and not shown to you at all, but you can still manage the availability of individual AI enhancements below.

(forgive my verbosity - it's just an example, I am sure it could be made more concise!)

A further four suggestions:

1. I think that on a clean install of Firefox, the user should be asked their preferred AI enhancement default state (and possibly even which features they wish to enable) as part of the onboarding experience.
2. I suggest that the window should explain what "Available" means (as distinct from Enabled) as this is not immediately obvious - I didn't know until I read Stef's reply on the subject.
3. I'm not sure I like the word "Blocked" here - it has a negative connotation that implies the AI is something bad or malicious, or conversely that the user who doesn't want an AI feature is "getting in the way" by refusing. "Disabled" has a much more neutral tone, and is a more obvious counterpart to the "Enabled" option.
4. On the individual AI feature enable toggles, is it worth mentioning which ones are purely local and which ones have privacy implications (i.e. use a cloud implementation)?

Edit: P.S. I am very pleased this feature is coming to Firefox, as someone who has zero interest in AI stuff it has always been tiresome on each update having to hunt down which badly-named about:config setting I need to hit to make it go away. I also appreciate that you and the Team are clearly making a conscious effort to give control and flexibility - I really do think that separating out "Will new AI be shown to me?" from "Is this specific AI feature enabled?" is a good idea, I just think the implementation is a bit rough around the edges in terms of helping people to truly understand what the various options actually do.

[GunChleoc]

There should be a separate option to block all new enhancements. People might want to use the translation feature (which is generally useful) or image descriptions (which is an accessibility feature) but want to avoid any anything else by AI.

[Alarm-Siren]

This is already how the implementation works, its just (in my view) poorly worded so that its not clear that it is how it works. See my post above .

If you want to do as you suggest, you would set Translation and Image Descriptions to Enabled, the other AI features to Blocked, and switch 'on' Block AI Enhancements toggle. This will cause the two specific AI features you want to be enabled, the others all disabled, and any future AI features added to Firefox will also be disabled by default.

[Bane]

All I'm going to say is please do not turn my long-time favorite web browser into yet more AI slop.

Please focus on real features and stop wasting resources on a dead-end technology from a speculative bubble.

Adding a setting to disable all AI features is one thing, but anyone with basic pattern recognition knows that, if a company/group/whatever starts pushing for something, they'll keep pushing for it more and more, unless they decide to kill it completely. So I really don't like this direction for Firefox and I'm concerned I'm going to have to switch to whatever browser advertises itself as privacy-focused and "AI-free" in the future if you don't completely stop your AI endeavors.

[jthibeault]

Serious question: why was AI integration (especially the features that use LLMs to generate tab group names, causing high CPU usage) integrated into mainline Firefox in the first place? This should have been an extension. It should be moved to an extension. Optional and not enabled by default, that's not good enough to me. I don't want an LLM artifact on my computer of dubious plagiaristic provenance generating tab names.

[stef]

Update (February 4th, 2026): AI controls now available in Beta 148.0b11