It just keeps getting worse - Firefox to "evolve into a modern AI browser"
Just like Google plan with Chrome, Mozilla aren't sitting still on expanding Firefox into something resembling a web browser but with more AI.
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Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.
Come on, this isn't Reddit, at least skim the article before you start with the performative outrage.
It should be something that people can easily turn ON.
It is opt in, this article is click bait.
Directly from the horses mouth:
"In Firefox, you’ll never be locked into one ecosystem or have AI forced into your browsing experience. You decide when, how or whether to use it at all. You’ve already seen this approach in action through some of our latest features like the AI chatbot in the sidebar for desktop or Shake to Summarize on iOS.
Now, we’re excited to invite you to help shape the work on our next innovation: an AI Window. It’s a new, intelligent and user-controlled space we’re building in Firefox that lets you chat with an AI assistant and get help while you browse, all on your terms. Completely opt-in, you have full control, and if you try it and find it’s not for you, you can choose to switch it off."
We'll just ignore the fact that the chat bot menu setting randomly appeared after an update. Very opt in. The only way to kill the task it sparks is to go into about:config and kill all the browser.ml.* options.
No one here cares what Firefox says because their actions have already hurt the trust in them.
Do the processes still run even if you toggle the setting off?
Just going through settings was not enough. The process was still running. I don't know which toggle fully killed it because I clicked everything off at once.
Except I literally had to dig through the about: config settings to turn off AI in my browsing experience. So they are already lying
I didn't. So why is that?
Ah yes, the classic:
They must be maliciously lying instead of me using something wrong argument.
Very solid, much sound.
I can flip that around for you: "Ah yes, the classic: the user must be in the wrong, not the organisation with a history of secretly installing an extension nobody asked for".
If it's so easy to "use wrong" then it's badly designed software.
Any articles can be a click bait. The reality is what matters.
I didnt turn on AI in Firefox myself. It just appeared there after an update and was turned on. It is not opt in but an opt out.
It's not needed. Nobody is looking for AI powered shit and they will feel it in their numbers. Why invest the pennies Mozilla can invest in a technology that big monsters are developing with billions and billions of dollars and natural resources? It's not even reasonable, like a Pocket 2.0.
Unfortunate Newsflash:
It's smaller reddit.
The lowest common denominator consumes all. And that denominator includes not being able to read articles or apply critical thought.
Nobody's saying it's mandatory. People don't want their web browsers to be full of bloated AI slop. Why should there be the AI components of Firefox on my hard drive if I'm never going to use them? Why should my web browser be full of low quality features I'll never use? It's enshittification. Not to mention the very quote you're pasting specifies that it's opt-out, not opt-in.
The problem is the "AI" presence in itself. It shouldn't be in Firefox at all, or frankly in any other software.
Also, corporations and their CEOs lie every single day, you know.
But how could the trolls enrage well meaning people into moving to a less privacy respecting browser if the post wasn't designed for performative outrage?
Few read the articles around here, like any social media. I could come with a headline that Bill Gates proposed using trans people's brains for AI processing, Matrix style, and harvesting the water of the dead ones, a la Dune. Lemmy would eat it up.
