Put the AI stuff into an optional add-on

[MuteDog]

Instead of forcing AI stuff down your users throats, just put it into an add-on that users can install on the browser if they want it. If it's as great as you seem to believe, then what's the problem with making it opt-in by default instead of having to opt-out?

[Konrad1998]

Im sure 25% of people use this browser to stay away from ai slop. This browser users arent target audience for ai. Google/Opera/Edge this browsers are target audience but NOT! Firefox

[hbaber]

Considering they have already had at least one (known) security issue regarding the AI Chatbot, I would rather they have this separate from the base installation.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1952268

While this bug requires you to set-up the chatbot first, it's evident that for some reason something outside the chatbot sidebar can be leaked to the AI bot. It's just waiting for the inevitable exploit/malicious extension that abuses any of the currently available and future AI features or a similar bug leaking all sorts of private information to the AI chatbot.

New features = More code = Increased possibility of bugs/exploits.

Firefox developers have stated they're invested into making Firefox an "AI browser", and while I don't think they mean going as far as something like Comet Browser (https://www.perplexity.ai/comet), it is still worrisome that a browser's AI functionality will have increasingly more features. Especially if you consider Comet's variant being capable of taking control of your tabs using a simple command as can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj1e6F4h9Vc

Don't get me wrong, I have used and will use certain AI chatbots or stuff like Stability Diffusion, but that is on my own accord and in a controlled environment. I want full control, I don't want something pseudo-deactivated with people claiming it doesn't do anything until you set it up, I don't want it there in the first place because of the added security risk. Same as I didn't see any use in Pocket before they removed it some time ago.

By adding these features you will be increasing the attack vector of the browser, while also increasing the privacy risk. These decisions will inevitably lead to people using forks instead of the base product.

Worst case scenario is some new CEO/Leader of Mozilla deciding that we should just accept privacy invasive features just like everyone else does... and when Firefox becomes less private and less secure, why should I be using it over Chromium/Brave/Edge? Those browsers give me better performance out of the box, those browsers don't have a crippling memory leak issue on Youtube causing it to fill 50GB+ RAM on a single tab while I have some game open in the background, have HDR support and typically don't lag behind with web standards.

As a matter of fact I can use every extension/userscript I want on Ungoogled Chromium, so at the moment it's me just not liking the base UI of Chromium browsers and not wanting to adjust to it, that's keeping me with Firefox.

There is also no question at launch if you want to have it Enabled or not, they just enable it for you and the killswitch for that comes months later. Some developer on Reddit said Q1 2026, but that can be 2 months from now if not delayed and the same dev wasn't even sure if setting the about:config option browser.ml.enable to false is enough to disable all AI/ML features. So yeah that is also reassuring.

[kkdavs09]

yes!! This!! I hate -- HATE -- the extra effort and work it takes to turn off all of the AI features on the software and other tools I rely on. I don't enjoy the feeling that we're mere guinea pigs to feed data into the AI Slop Machine.