16 ms·

I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

• moontear 11mo ago
  Go to about:config and set browser.ml.enabled to false and throw in browser.ml.chat.enabled (false) for good measure. Done.
  • saint_yossarian 11mo ago
    You'd think so, but you also need to set browser.ml.chat.menu to false to remove a context menu item.
    • moontear 11mo ago
      Looking at https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/browser/components/genai/GenAI.sys.mjs https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/browser/components... it is a bit weird, that there isn't a general check for browser.ml.enabled true/false.
      • saint_yossarian 11mo ago
        Yeah, there should really just be one global setting. Also note that it's browser.ml.enable (no "d") vs. browser.ml.chat.enabled, to make matters even more infuriating.
    • Krssst 11mo ago
      I think the option to disable the context menu item is right in said context menu. Best place to put the option honestly, I wish all AI features had a disable button right next to them.
• fortyseven 11mo ago
  The sidebar where I can integrate my own locally hosted LLM? So I can quickly grab summaries and stuff? THAT'S helpful. The rest, get the hell away.
• shard972 11mo ago
  [dead]
• WD-42 11mo ago
  Nobody ever wants anything in Firefox, but in this case it’s probably especially true.
  • cedilla 11mo ago
    People want a lot of stuff in Firefox. However, people also seem to neatly bin all features into either "obviously necessary part of a web browser" and "obviously extraneous nonsense" when what they really mean is "things I personally want" and "things I personally don't want".
• everdrive 11mo ago
  Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.
  • coldpie 11mo ago
    > Does anyone want AI in anything? Yeah, they do. Go talk to anyone who isn't in a super-online bubble such as HN or Bsky or a Firefox early-adopter program. They're all using it, all the time, for everything. I don't like it either, but that's the reality.
    • smlavine 11mo ago
      > They're all using it. Not really. Go talk to anyone who uses the internet for Facebook, Whatsapp, and not much else. Lots of people have typed in chatgpt.com or had Google's AI shoved in their face, but the vast majority of "laypeople" I've talked to about AI (actually, they've talked to me about AI after learning I'm a tech guy -- "so what do you think about AI?") seem to be resigned to the fact that after the personal computer and the internet, whatever the rich guys in SF do is what is going to happen anyway. But I sense a feeling of powerlessness and a fear of being left behind, not anything approaching genuine interest in or excitement by the technology.
    • gbear605 11mo ago
      If I talk to the people I know who don’t spend all their time online, they’re just not using AI. Quite a few of my close friends haven’t used AI even once in any way, and most of the rest tried it out once and didn’t really care for it. They’re busy doing things in the real world, like spending time with their kids, or riding horses, or reading books.
      • vidarh 11mo ago
        Being busy riding horses and reading books are both niche activities (yes, reading too, sadly, at lest above a very small number of books which does not translate to people being busy doing it more than a tiny fraction of their time), which suggests perhaps your close friends are a rather biased set. Nothing wrong with that, but we're all in bubbles.
• JohnFen 11mo ago
  Mozilla's gonna Mozilla. I don't want this, but at the same time I think people are overreacting. If Mozilla remains true to their word and this is an opt-in sort of thing, it's hard for me to get too worked up about it. I can just ignore it.
  • _verandaguy 11mo ago
    It's specifically been opt-out: `browser.ml.enable` is set to `true` in `about:config` in recent versions, and even disabling that doesn't get rid of the "AI assistant" option in the right-click dropdown menu.
    • noir_lord 11mo ago
      browser.ml.chat.enabled set to false browser.ml.chat.menu set to false browser.ml.chat.page set to false browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge set to false browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge set to false browser.ml.chat.shortcuts set to false browser.ml.chat.sidebar set to false browser.ml.enable set to false browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled set to false browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled set to false browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled set to false browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnable set to false extensions.ml.enabled set to false That should do it. Can also use the user config override if you want to do it without having to do that every time you install FF somewhere new (put user.js in the root folder of your firefox profile). user_pref("browser.ml.chat.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.ml.chat.menu", false); user_pref("browser.ml.chat.page", false); user_pref("browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge", false); user_pref("browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge", false); user_pref("browser.ml.chat.shortcuts", false); user_pref("browser.ml.chat.sidebar", false); user_pref("browser.ml.enable", false); user_pref("browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnable", false); user_pref("extensions.ml.enabled", false); It's a garbage feature that no one appears to have asked for.
      • whalesalad 11mo ago
        So sick of all these hacks. I've been a Firefox user for decades but it's time to throw in the towel.
• CrzyLngPwd 11mo ago
  I want AI in VSC as an assistant, but that's it. If I could have set a systemwide setting to say "Only add AI to things I want", then I would have ticked that box a long time ago. Maybe YT could add an option for "filter out AI slop". I might pay for YT if they did that.
  • nyeah 11mo ago
    Yeah, I think there's a market for suppressing AI slop.
    • mnbpdx 11mo ago
      would be funny if openAI couldn't turn a profit but somebody could suppressing it
• jordanb 11mo ago
  The fact that Mozilla thinks people want AI in Firefox is proof that Mozilla has the wrong leadership.
• wkat4242 11mo ago
  Welllll.. Yes and no. If it works with my local ollama servers then yeah I don't mind it. I already use the existing AI integration sometimes (which is very basic) for translation and summarisation. It's not bad (translation is definitely better than the builtin one because it is much better at context) But if it has to be cloud crap then no. I don't want big tech datamining my behaviour. It's definitely not a viable way for them to make money on services when it comes to me. And I think most firefox users will feel that way. If they didn't care about such things they'd be using chrome.
• jmathai 11mo ago
  There are some really cool ways that AI/LLMs can enhance the web browsing experience. I just saw Tweeks on here yesterday and it's a very cool idea to bring the power of greasemonkey to the masses. What's often missing nowadays when integrating AI is creativity and understanding what people really want. It's not easy, but that's what makes products great. I agree with the article that the AI being introduced into Firefox isn't very compelling and I'd rather it not exist. But I disagree that people don't want AI features in Firefox - they just don't want what they're getting. Tweeks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45916525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45916525
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
• transcriptase 11mo ago
  Nobody wants anything from Mozilla except Firefox/Thunderbird to be high-performance alternatives to Chrome/Outlook with fewer restrictions on extensions. That’s it. The rest is just activism and kids playing in a sandbox with non-profit money to pad out their resume with whatever topical keywords might land them their next gig.
  • brazukadev 11mo ago
    Activism and kids playing at Mozilla was a long time ago.
  • aquova 11mo ago
    I see this sentiment a lot, but I never agree with it. Sure, some of their projects seem very odd for them to lead, but given that they are completely reliant on their competitor for cash -- a revenue source that has been threatened several times by anti-trust cases against Google -- they should be looking to branch out. Firefox alone won't pay the bills, so they need to try and find some other revenue source. Plus, Chrome has essentially won. Not necessarily for any engineering reason, at least not these days, but from continued momentum of being the market leader. Sitting around quietly isn't going to get people to switch, they do need to find some way to distinguish themselves apart from Chrome, which again leads to these misc features being thrown out there. The AI inclusion seems like the same reason everyone else is adding AI, they don't want to be left behind if or when it's viewed as an essential feature.
    • probably_wrong 11mo ago
      > Chrome has essentially won. Not necessarily for any engineering reason, at least not these days, but from continued momentum of being the market leader. Ah, how the young forget... Mozilla became popular precisely due to their willingness to challenge the market leader at the time [1], namely, Internet Explorer. Going against the market leader should be in their DNA. The fight is not lost just because there's a market leader. If anything, Mozilla is currently losing the battle because the leadership doesn't believe they can do it again. I'm fine with Mozilla diversifying their income, but I'm not fine with Mozilla sacrificing their browser (the part we desperately need the most) in the name of a "Digital Rights Foundation" that, at this rate, will lose their seat at the negotiating table. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/media/File:BrowserUsageShare.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m...
• oytis 11mo ago
  Wrong, Google wants it very much. Otherwise there would be a usable, well-maintained web browser without AI on the market and everyone would just use it
• micromacrofoot 11mo ago
  I do, the "go to a website to use AI" era is taking too long, I want full integration. I don't want to use websites or apps, I want to ask for things using human language and get a human-like response. I tire of all these interfaces.
  • fuzzy2 11mo ago
    What you describe is, at least from my perspective, entirely different from "full integration" (of AI in browsers). Instead, you want to replace computers entirely, with a voice assistant somewhat like Alexa, backed by SOTA STT, TTS and AI (possibly LLM agents).
    • micromacrofoot 11mo ago
      eventually, but that's going to take a decade at this rate... no one has a voice assistant that can actually do anything worthwhile beyond than flip some light switches right now we could get a browser that understands what's on the website and can execute a task for me, that's completely possible... every bill I get shouldn't require me to navigate some labyrinth of some 20 year old's idea of a slick user experience I shouldn't have to learn a new interface for every single thing I do, but that's the reality we're living in... I'd rather AI handle it
  • meindnoch 11mo ago
    yuck.
  • pissmeself 11mo ago
    [dead]
    • micromacrofoot 11mo ago
      I do all the time, I went to a restaurant the other day and had to ask for a physical menu instead of using an app. I can't get pizza delivered without using an app. When I go to a pharmacy, a person tells me to get my meds by putting my information into an app they used to replace the person at the register. When I go get coffee, my order is in the mix with a dozen people who ordered via an app... I can't get priority despite being literally right there waiting. We've apparently given up on hiring people for various tasks, so at least give me an app that understands what I ask it instead of funneling me through some "user experience" that differs for every single thing I do.
• basilgohar 11mo ago
  What is most upsetting is that they just offered access to the large commercial AI providers and no clear way to have a self-hosted or alternative option. THIS is where they lost their way. They must be profiting or partnering, no longer serving the community.
• wordpad 11mo ago
  Heck yes, we want jt, can't imagine browsing without it. It's like going from YouTube to Tiktok, for most content we consume, you could cut 90% of it without losing anything of value.
  • smodo 11mo ago
    Well maybe you lose your ability to focus or your sanity or your privacy but yeah.
  • topaz0 11mo ago
    So you can get 10x the brain damage in the same amount of time. This is not a great case.
  • hooverd 11mo ago
    "I want to liquefy my brain on short form video" is quite a take.
• riskable 11mo ago
  If I could get Firefox to perform searches on my behalf via the AI sidebar that would be amazing! Are you kidding me? YES I WANT THIS! Do I want it to go to some 3rd party AI service? No. Absolutely not. However, if it's configurable like the Copilot extension—where I can pick which AI I'm using—then I'm all for it. I'll just pick a model I've got in ollama and live the dream. NOTE: I as I wrote this, Firefox underlined "ollama" in red because it failed the spellcheck. Imagine if Firefox had a proper grammar-checking AI too. That would be super useful. I'd love that! Those who think they don't want AI in their browsers are completely lacking in imagination, IMHO.
• impossiblefork 11mo ago
  I think it could be nice in the longer term, as AI gets better. Especially if it's local. No one wants to browse Facebook or Reddit or whatever. The interfaces are user hostile or horrible. If we could interact with our own, private interface and the outcome was submitted to some text/web LLM that then did the interaction with the actual websites, then we would actually be able to use the public internet. It's possible that this software shouldn't be a browser though, but something else, possibly something which is built on top of a browser engine.
• jillesvangurp 11mo ago
  Well, there are all these alternative browsers like Comet, Atlas, and a few others that are doing similar things. And I'd be very surprised if Google isn't going to push more features via Chrome and their search engine. I think this is more a case of there being limited appetite for what Mozilla is doing here. At least so far. I keep that stuff turned off in Mozilla and just don't see the appeal. And I'm saying that as someone who does agentic coding for some things, uses and pays for ChatGPT, uses perplexity regularly, etc. And I did install Atlas the other day. I didn't switch to it and wasn't too impressed with what it does. I think browser makers (including the big ones) are still a bit struggling to identify use cases beyond doing search via a llm, adding side bars, and trying to find a balance between site security and giving all this full access to what's on the page. Mozilla using their own limited models seems to have very little to add to this mix. At least my impression. But it's too early to state that user's don't want this. Some users don't want this, clearly. And some other users really don't like any form of change. But there are other users that might want some of these things if they are well executed. Anyway, Mozilla's attempts here strike me as yet another weak effort to do "something" that follows in a long line of half assed products and services they've developed, launched (sometimes), and killed over the last decades. I don't think they have what it takes; or at least, they have a lot to prove. And the vague hand wavy announcements for this aren't a great sign that they have this figured out beyond "doing something with AI".
• joelthelion 11mo ago
  I wouldn't mind being able to quickly ask an llm about the page I'm browsing or some text I select.
  • flatline 11mo ago
    Serious question: to what end? I'm pretty adept at skimming text and honing in on things of interest. I have also spent years in academic and professional environments developing those skills, so I genuinely may not understand some common use cases.
    • flkiwi 11mo ago
      In a typical corporate environment, you cannot assume the recipient of an email will read past the first sentence, maybe not even the subject line. A vast number of people simply do not read. They can but they don’t.
    • godshatter 11mo ago
      I can see this if you're looking over something and don't know what it is. Highlight it and right-click or whatever and ask the AI to give you a quick summary. Similar to how wikipedia links will show enough in the preview to get an idea what it might be.
• torben-friis 11mo ago
  I’m currently moving from macOS to Linux, so I’m using Firefox as a daily driver for the first time in a decade. While I really appreciate its existence, I was surprised by the amount of corporate stuff I had to remove setting it up: Frontpage ads from their supporters, search offering completions and extras that border on ads as well, the AI bar being pushed through a popup tutorial… It definitely felt different from other free software, distinctly similar to a for-profit app in a bad way. All the crap was removable in settings, but still.
  • rwmj 11mo ago
    They could have saved all the Google money and built a huge non-profit foundation dedicated to making the best browser. Instead they spent it on C-suite salaries and idiotic side quests. This is the consequence.
  • noir_lord 11mo ago
    They have Telemetry as well which is on by default - see under "Firefox Data Collection and Use" in the settings.
• dralley 11mo ago
  I don't even like AI (certainly don't like hearing about it), but I don't really have an issue with AI features. There, I said it. HN spent a year discussing the threat that AI posed to Google Search. Well, if it threatens search, then it threatens the browser. They're hedging. How frequently does Mozilla get criticized for failing to do X Y or Z to change with the times (or for doing it late? for having too much ambition, or not enough, sometimes at the same time?). The fact of the matter is that they're already struggling to remain relevant as it is, and their competitors have been dabbling in this space for a while. They're already going to have the infrastructure, because local LLMs works really well for translation (and being able to do content translation without sending all the content off to Google is obviously a sensible feature for Firefox to have). There's no reason to not at least try to match their competitors. Especially if they could potentially hit on some "killer app", which is really the only way at this point to make up any significant ground in marketshare in a market that is otherwise entirely commodified.
• tmtvl 11mo ago
  Well, as long as: - It runs locally without consuming too much energy or phoning home, - it can be completely disabled without being re-enabled after an update, - its training set is ethically sourced and the manifest of training sources is publicly accessible (I'm fine with the training data not being accessible as long as it's properly marked in the manifest), - and the weights and training code are open, I would be fine having some sort of AI model available as assistant in FF. I probably wouldn't use it, but I wouldn't have any problems with it being there.
• railka 11mo ago
  These tabs will probably be similar to the tabs in browsers from OpenAI and Perplexity. And some people really do use these browsers. Perhaps this is Mozilla's chance to monetize. Give at least some users the opportunity to use this feature and pay Mozilla.
• chironjit 11mo ago
  I connected Claude to Firefox's ai pane and honestly I feel that this a good middle ground. I don't want an AI browser but I appreciate being able to have ai access specific pages when I have questions. My only beef is they've basically put Claude's webpage on a side pane, with all the issues of a squished webpage. I also think having a separate mode is really the best middle ground between an all spying ai-browser and one that has none (which makes doing some things with ai more manual)
  • berkes 11mo ago
    > Claude's webpage on a side pane, with all the issues of a squished webpage. I have used that feature for a few weeks now and find it utterly useless. Partly because it is squished. But mostly because it offers no value over just having a tab open with Claude (or in my case Mistral). The extra buttons (summarize) and integration (context menu) hardly ever work (pages and selections are often too large for gpt, copilot, mistral or even claude and the sidebar just gives an error) but even if they did: what problem do these extra buttons and integrations solve? Am I missing something? Do note that I would love integration the other way around: to have an AI agent (through an MCP for example) drive my firefox. Safely, contained, etc etc. I am not an AI luddite. I just find the firefox sidebar offering no value at all.
    • chrisweekly 11mo ago
      I think that's exactly what people are doing w the Playwright MCP...
      • berkes 11mo ago
        It's indeed exactly what I do. And I think Firefox should step up and become a better alternative to playwright. One geared at developers with tools like profiling, dom-manipulation (basically the Developer Console) assertions, visual comparison etc. Or (and?) one geared towards normal browsing and interacting with webapps.
    • prophesi 11mo ago
• llarsson 11mo ago
  There are already APIs being developed that assume a browser has an LLM either inside it or otherwise available, see for instance https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Summarizer_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Summarizer_... So they pretty much have to ship one, to stay relevant. And they are privacy-focused, so I'm happy they are not just using ChatGPT or whatever under the hood to implement support.
• berkes 11mo ago
  I don't want AI in Firefox. For one, because it breaks the Unix philosophy of "doing one thing and doing that well". In that vein, I do want Firefox to develop/allow/improve an interface so that machines, amongst which AI-MCPs, can drive my firefox. And do so safely, secure, contained, etc. So that my AI agent can e.g. open a Firefox tab and do things there on my behalf. Without me being afraid it nukes all my bookmarks, and with me having confidence in safety nets so that some other tool or agent cannot just take over my gmail tab and start spamming under my account. Point is: I really think Mozilla and Firefox have a role to play in the AI landscape that's shaping up. But yet another client to interact with chatbots is not that. Leave that to people building clients please: do one thing and do it well.
  • jy14898 11mo ago
    I don't think you can apply Unix philosophy to a (GUI) web browser, you don't use it compositionally.
    • cwillu 11mo ago
      But that's basically the promise, that the damn thing _can_ use arbitrary things compositionally.
    • nonethewiser 11mo ago
      In fact, the web browser may be the best example of a program antithetical to the unix philosophy. It is a single program that does rendering, password management, video decoding, dev tools, notifications, extension systems, etc. Adding some new AI component is rather on-brand for browsers (whether a good decision or not).
    • anuramat 11mo ago
      by this logic sockets are also non-unix
      • tadfisher 11mo ago
        I mean, that's not exactly wrong...
• sorcercode 11mo ago
  I couldn't disagree more. I want responsible AI and i would expect Mozilla to lead the way on how to do this when it comes to browsers (they were pioneers when it came to containers and privacy control). Here's some ways I can think of: - seamless integration with local models - opt in and opt out experience when needed - ai instrumentation (so fill up tedious long web forms for me) - ai and accessibility these are off the top of my head. it boggles my mind that there are so many convinced that AI doesn't offer good use cases for a browser. I think the "how they introduce it" part is crucial and it doesn't look like Mozilla has cracked that nut from the announcement. but to say no one wants this is just not true and short sighted.
• hehshjsdj 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  • AlienRobot 11mo ago
    What does "jeetcoded" mean?
    • jdiff 11mo ago
      A racist play on vibecoding with the popular ethnic slur "pajeet." Thus the cowering behind a fresh account.
      • hehshjsdj 11mo ago
        [flagged]
      • AlienRobot 11mo ago
        Thanks, but now I wish I hadn't asked. :(
• agentultra 11mo ago
  Clearly it's not, "nobody." But I'm certainly one of those users that are getting frustrated with having to turn off all of the AI features in recent releases. You can't be all things to all people.
• Etherlord87 11mo ago
  I think fewer and fewer people want Mozilla in their Firefox ;) Maybe we'll get a better non-profit organization make a Firefox fork at some point.
  • rs186 11mo ago
    There is zero money in making a browser.
• liminal 11mo ago
  Publishers are using AI to generate pages. I want AI to extract the worthwhile bits. Why shouldn't users have tools too?
• gmuslera 11mo ago
  "nobody"... of the vocal ones. Anyway, I would be more afraid of agents than just AI answering about things, generating images/music or whatever. That could affect much more than just privacy.
• altcognito 11mo ago
  People don't want AI passively lurking in the background extracting behavioral data yet this is the model they are aiming for, or at least gravitating towards repeatedly. I also don't need / don't want it's manipulative presence around. Not to be paranoid, but it's not just about browsers, that's just the most convenient place we've gotten started with this sort of mass surveillance (and control) architecture.
  • riskable 11mo ago
    > People don't want AI passively lurking in the background extracting behavioral data yet this is the model they are aiming for, or at least gravitating towards repeatedly. Is there any evidence Mozilla has plans to do this? As far as I know, there's only two companies doing what you describe: Microsoft and Meta. Microsoft being the most invasive (and evil) by a huge amount—because it's at the OS level.
    • altcognito 11mo ago
      Yes, the article is about Mozilla, yes I was sloppy in expanding the scope without saying as much. Microsoft is definitely the most overt in all of this, but Google is working on built in WebAPIs[1], Opera has integrations (sidebars too), Brace includes Leo, and then of course there are the "AI first" companies like Perplexity, Arc etc... The problem is often that almost all browser features lurk in the background without you really knowing whether they are active or what their scope really ends up being. Cookies, javascript, and various other aspects of the reality of using the web have been abused for mass tracking (and surveillance) So what's this got to do with Mozilla? Unless Mozilla is encouraging the use of local models, they are just encouraging the development of the same technology that has gotten us into this trouble in the first place. Maybe they should continue the work that meta started -- support development/use of open models of AI and guarantee the AI feature will be completely sandboxed in useful ways. [1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/built-in https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/built-in
• TimByte 11mo ago
  I get that Mozilla's trying to stay relevant in a changing landscape, but maybe listening to their core users is the competitive edge
• nba456_ 11mo ago
  i do
• punkbit 11mo ago
  Maybe there are people higher up with a lot of money who force these features. At the end of the day, the builders have the obey.
• rs186 11mo ago
  Unless I am horribly mistaken, using Firefox is an intentional choice by a vanishing group of people. If you are just a little bit less careful or determined, you would likely be using chrome or a chrome variant, definitely not Firefox. These users are choosing a browser that has slightly worse performance, has fewer features (e.g. WebUSB) and is seeing more problems with Cloudflare/Google captcha every day. All of this for better adblocking and full control of the browser. Why would they want AI?
  • homebrewer 11mo ago
    Good autoscroll too (the one you invoke by clicking the wheel). It's what made me stick to Firefox during its worst years, 4+ until relatively recently. It has just the right acceleration curve and properly works inside nested scrollable elements.
  • mrits 11mo ago
    After using Chrome for a decade I switched to firefox a few years ago when there was a headline about Google blocking ad blocker. I'm not sure whatever happened to that but I wanted no part in a company even considering it
    • noir_lord 11mo ago
      They went ahead with manifest v3, as a result Firefox (and it's derivs) get full fat adblocking (Ublock Origin) and Chrome gets Ublock Lite which does the best it can with the v3 manifest limitations.
  • Synaesthesia 11mo ago
    On Linux and Windows it is IMO the best browser and it's pretty good on MacOS too, although Safari is still my fave on that platform. It's stable, got good UI and light on resources. The excellent adblocking is a huge feature. For the average Joe user, they might want some AI features but most techy users have already got that figured out.
    • Lord-Jobo 11mo ago
• adolph 11mo ago
  I think using AI to adjust the salience landscape of a web page (aka ad blocking) would be welcomed.
• kgwxd 11mo ago
  If they did things right, it shouldn't matter. Default Firefox should be nothing but a browser, everything else should be an extension. And Mozilla should be beholden to the same restrictions every other extension developer is.
• quotemstr 11mo ago
  Only reason Firefox has 2% market share is that Mozilla's leaders keep listening to a tiny, loud minority of extremely online luddites instead of delivering actual users what they want. The anti-AI set on HN is the same set that claims users want feature phones, not smartphones. They'd probably also be against long-distance telephone lines and the wheel.
  • strictnein 11mo ago
    I mean, who were they listening to when they acquired Pocket and integrated it into Firefox? Or decided to build their own video chat service? Or an encrypted file sharing service? Or Persona, Firefox OS, Firefox Hello, etc etc. These weren't just bad decisions in retrospect, these were clearly bad decisions at the time. https://killedbymozilla.com/ https://killedbymozilla.com/
• daemonologist 11mo ago
  The built-in translate is nice. The LLM stuff I don't use, but as long as it's tucked away in its own sidebar I don't mind.
• animanoir 11mo ago
  [dead]
• dmantis 11mo ago
  As far as it's an optional separate window, I don't see any issues with that. E.g. I had a very good experience in reversing a local bank API with LLMs to download my bank statements in a few seconds by local python scripts instead of several minutes of error-prone clicking in the bank's shitty old interface. The thing that I'd have done in one day, the LLM coded in several minutes by taking recorded request-responses. Yes, the code is a bit gibberish, but why do I care for my local single-user usage? I can imagine a dozen similar stupid but routine API parsing challenges for LLMs that everyone could use. If it's not enabled during usual browsing and doesn't snoop in everyday data, but only in a dedicated sandboxed window, I say it's a good design from Mozilla's side.
  • vidarh 11mo ago
    Yeah, I just gave an example elsewhere of turning a Notion page into a JSON object, that Claude Code trivially did with Playwright, but that'd be far nicer if I could just click a button to talk about the current page. I'd be happy for it to be sandboxed, as long as it's easily accessible. Really, I intend to push it into a Google Sheet, and ideally I'd just want a bookmark to do that, but for now I guess I'll settle for a script I can give a URL to. For a lot of people's daily manual chores, the ability to ask an LLM to solve it, and bookmark a "ask this again about another page" action would be a gamechanger.
• shevy-java 11mo ago
  I also wondered about this. Mozilla pushed out some AI buttons. I don't need this. I don't want this. I did not ask for this. I think what we here see is that commercial interests ruin a browser. The AI things are pushed by an idea to make firefox more marketable to companies. So Mozilla gets more money, at the expense of users. This is the sad reality that explains why Mozilla behaves that way. Google too by the way.
• notepad0x90 11mo ago
  I think "nobody i know" and nobody are different things. Mozilla wants more firefox users. there are "AI browsers" and ai integrated browsing is becoming more and more the norm. Mozilla is doing the right thing here, the features are there but unobtrusive. But down the road, I fully expect Mozilla to do whatever they have to do to remain in the game. Their small market share is hurting the entire internet, they can't afford to become a browser for retro-techo-luddites or something.
  • isodev 11mo ago
    > "AI browsers" and ai integrated browsing is becoming more and more the norm Not really, outside influencers looking to capture the next hot thing (like Mozilla) and tech-bros, there is no living soul on this planet that wants or is trying to normalise AI browsers.
    • jajuuka 11mo ago
      Another example of "nobody I know" and not nobody.
      • isodev 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        • jajuuka 11mo ago
          I'm not a techbro and I want this. I know other people who aren't techbros who want it as well. So what makes your anecdotal evidence any stronger than mine? Maybe you and the author shouldn't be speaking for everyone.
        • orbital-decay 11mo ago
          >It also echoes sentiments expressed in any other medium or social you check. That tells more about your socials than anything else. I personally know plenty of non-technical folks using ChatGPT (because it's the only buzzword they know) to augment their browsing in an awkward manner. They want utility, they don't give a damn about anyone's sentiments.
• fullshark 11mo ago
  They want to browse the internet, and really that means browse the three sites they care about. They aren't going to change their browser cause of AI capabilities, so ultimately it doesn't matter. It's like arguing over whether users want dark mode. Some do, it's not going to change market share meaningfully.
• nashashmi 11mo ago
  Allow me to be a devil's advocate here. I don't natively like AI in Firefox. But let's allow ourselves to imagine that Firefox has a help menu that can respond to AI. Now let's imagine a help agent (helper?) that can agentically make changes to Firefox Settings using AI. Second set of features could be language rewriter and translator in web pages and web forums. Third set of features: extract text notes from a web page. save it to the browser history. Allow AI chatting with this AI text enhanced browser history. Fourth feature: Bookmark surfing. AI will individually look in each bookmark for resources and information that can be outputted based on chat requests. The first and only useful scenario in a local setting that actually would be applauded and appreciated. I don't know how it is on some systems, and how much resource it would expend in energy. It wont slow down Firefox off the shelf, because Firefox won't scour the AI index, unprompted. Edit: rearranged paragraphs.
  • cwillu 11mo ago
    “But let's allow ourselves to imagine that Firefox has a help menu that can respond to AI. Now let's imagine a help agent (helper?) that can agentically make changes to Firefox Settings using AI.” Dear god, no. The last thing I want to be doing is telling grandma over the phone how to sweet-talk the settings screen into turning her adblocker back on.
• ufocia 11mo ago
  Thank you for sharing your perspective. I'm not sure I want AI in my browser, whatever that may mean, but I don't think everyone shares my view. To think otherwise is IMHO delusional.
• mrits 11mo ago
  Excited to see the all the security issues with the AI features leaking data in regular browser mode
• rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 11mo ago
  People say Mozilla should try to make Firefox better to steal back usage from Chrome and then they say stuff like "nobody want AI in Firefox". Like it or not, AI it's here and if you want your browser to reach more users some AI will be required.
• erikerikson 11mo ago
  Meanwhile a badly behaving page doesn't just maim the tab content area but freezes the whole browser. I've been using Firefox because my Chrome install got borked so I've used that to try giving FF a real try. I feel like I regularly have to get it out of my way. Maybe fix the browser first.
• flatline 11mo ago
  A more cynical take/question: is Mozilla just pursuing these initiatives because their corporate sponsors need to push AI everywhere they can to justify their burn, in the hopes that a profitable use case eventually arises with a sufficient user base accustomed to the technology to pay for it?
• captainkrtek 11mo ago
  AI as a word now even puts me off. Every podcast ad read, every news story, every linkedin post. It’s exhausting I can’t roll my eyes any harder when I hear some ad like “How can agentic AI reshape CRM for your workforce?”
• throwA29B 11mo ago
  Can't wait for the Ladybird to arrive.
• dana321 11mo ago
  ChatGPT Atlas, anyone?
• chankstein38 11mo ago
  > We see a lot of promise in AI browser features making your online experience smoother, more helpful, and more profitable for us because we can sell your data! Fixed that for you greed dbags.
• kburman 11mo ago
  Mozilla has lost the plot. People support Mozilla because they want a strong, independent browser, not so staff can siphon money into side projects that exist mainly to look good on someone’s resume. Things like Transformer Lab have nothing to do with Firefox and nothing to do with the mission Mozilla claims to care about. This isn’t innovation. Leadership keeps green-lighting trendy distractions while the browser that actually matters keeps slipping behind. And it’s happening because there’s no real oversight, no accountability, and no one willing to say “no” when someone pitches another off-brand hobby project. Mozilla needs a reality check. Stop burning resources on experiments nobody asked for, remove the people who think this is acceptable, and refocus on the one thing that still gives the organization a reason to exist: building a great browser. Until that happens, they’re just wasting donor money and goodwill while Firefox slowly fades away.
  • forgotpwd16 11mo ago
    >refocus on the one thing that still gives the organization a reason to exist: building a great browser Considering their existence depends on Google's money, it's to their best interest for the browser to lag behind Chrome.
    • nativeit 11mo ago
      I keep hearing this, but I haven’t seen any convincing evidence there are no alternatives.
      • glenstein 11mo ago
        I think it would have to be alternative search licenses, crowdsourced fundraising or some new product offering. There's little precedent for crowdsourced fundraising on the scale of what Mozilla gets from its search deals. The examples I hear are Wikipedia and Tor. Wikipedia is the largest of its kind, I suspect the largest year-by-year internet crowdsourced project in existence and it gets half of what Mozilla's operations cost. Tor even less. So Mozilla would have to have more than double the largest crowdsourcing effort in history. So there goes crowdsourcing, at least as a primary option. I don't think there's other licensing opportunities that pay out as much as Google, so there's strike two. So then it's a matter of dabbling in side bets, which risk being inconsequential, compromising core mission values (e.g. adtech), or user backlash (VPN, Pocket) and stand accused of losing track of their mission. I personally wouldn't mind doing what Proton does and offering a drive/calendar/email suite but, again they would get accused of losing sight of their mission and I don't know how much they would stand to make from it. Nevertheless I do think continuing to experiment in side bets is worth trying. Lastly, and perhaps most interestingly imo, they do some Ycombinator-style VC funding, which I believe are done out of the returns on their endowment. That might be one of the most intriguing directions over the long term, but again I have seen people on HN and point to that as yet another example of Mozilla supposedly failing to stay focused on their core mission.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• nunez 11mo ago
  I meant what were they expecting? A bunch of their privacy-wonk userbase to go "Oh shit; I'm finally gonna go all-in on the slop now that Mozilla's doing AI?" Like, what were they thinking? I'm glad that they have a single about:config option to turn it all off. First thing I did the minute I saw an "Ask AI" item appear in my right-click context menu.
• amoss 11mo ago
  I would prefer that contenteditable divs with multi-line contents would handle newlines in a consistent manner instead of the chaotic mess we have now. But I guess that doesn't pump stock valuations so AI slop it is.
• 1gn15 11mo ago
  I hate it when authors claim to speak for everyone.
• napolux 11mo ago
  I like the AI support in Firefox. It's there, useful and when I don't want to use it, I don't use it. As a ChatGPT subscriber I use it more since when I can just open a dedicated sidebar in Firefox with ChatGPT inside.
• InMice 11mo ago
  Features that theyd be more dignified to offer as plugins if they had it.
• NoSalt 11mo ago
  I don't want AI anywhere, but it seems I cannot open any of my familiar applications without having to stumble over their new, stupid "AI" button. It has become quite infuriating.
• melagonster 11mo ago
  Actually, AI in edge is not bad.
• dawnerd 11mo ago
  I wish these features were added as extensions that you could uninstall vs being baked in.
• constantcrying 11mo ago
  Mozilla spending their limited resources on something so absurd and irrelevant seems extremely strange. People use Firefox because they want privacy respecting software with good customizability. What Mozilla should be focusing is making their "vanilla" experience as good as possible and keep working on tools which further help user privacy. Firefox should be performant, compatible, well polished and have the best privacy tools available. Focusing on anything else will make it just a worse version of another browser. To be honest this makes me really question the leadership of Mozilla. Who is deciding this? And what are these decisions based on. I doubt that it is actual user research.
• 65 11mo ago
  Boy am I excited for the Ladybird alpha release. We won't have to deal with Chromium browsers, Safari, or Firefox anymore.
• markbao 11mo ago
  Most of the loudest critics - and, I’ve found, many commenters on HN - are entirely out of touch with the majority of technology users. To think that nobody wants these features isn’t based on what we see in the real world, which shows a billion users using ChatGPT every month. That, plus the fact that AI browsers already exist and have users, indicates that the argument is more “I don’t like AI and everyone else should agree” rather than “the data shows that nobody likes AI”. Those critics then straw-man by saying the AI will take up a ton of resources in your browser (it could be as simple as a text box) or collect your data secretively (what company wants to deal with that PR fallout?).
  • cyral 11mo ago
    Had to scroll way too far to find a comment like this. Unfortunately HN famously doesn’t understand what the average consumer wants. The Dropbox comment comes to mind.
    • rkomorn 11mo ago
      I hadn't read comments about Dropbox and products/features until maybe a week or two ago and somehow don't know the reference despite having spent most of the last 20 years in tech. I presume the story is along the lines of "someone declined to invest in Dropbox and lost out" but what do I need to google to get the actual context? I don't need a full rehash here. Edit: or is it "Dropbox is adding features nobody wants" and then turning out to be wrong? Edit again: presumably it's not about "Nobody Cares" by Dropbox, the band.
      • markbao 11mo ago
        The Dropbox thing is exactly what I was thinking of when I was writing my original comment. Here is the reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 The basic summary is that a HN commenter suggested Dropbox was redundant because you could do some convoluted setup that 0.1% of the world would understand and 0.001% would actually want to use (and yes, that’s still a few hundred thousand people) and overall that aged poorly.
• karel-3d 11mo ago
  Based on how many of these are there now, it's obvious some people want these features. I don't know the numbers, but some people obviously do want to chat with their browser now.
• jccx70 11mo ago
  [flagged]
• AnonHP 11mo ago
  Unfortunately there’s no winning for Mozilla. Whether you like it or not, and regardless of your view on the current state of “AI” and where it’s headed, the undeniable fact is that “AI” has been and is in the zeitgeist now and will continue to be for at least another year or two. If Mozilla Firefox does not show anything on something like this, the general public and the general tech writers (not as invested in Firefox) would write it off further. If Mozilla Firefox does something like this, then the diehard fans will be up in arms about what they see as distractions (and to be frank, Mozilla has had more than a few over the years). What matters is if Mozilla listens to feedback from a diverse audience instead of being swayed by any specific group. It’s not easy. I’d rather Mozilla try something and goof up or fail instead of just being left behind due to inaction.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• tgsovlerkhgsel 11mo ago
  I would love AI in the browser, as long as it is offered, not aggressively pushed in my face, is privacy friendly (i.e. ideally client side but at the very least I need to understand what is sent off the device, how it is used, and it should only be sent when I actively trigger the feature). In particular I'd also love agentic AI so I can quickly automate tasks on shitty web sites that can't be reasonably automated otherwise. But even a free, no-signup "summarize this wall of text" would be useful. I think the adoption of AI browsers shows that there are people who find value in this, and I think a lot more people would be interested if it wasn't getting relentlessly forced on them at every corner, making them refuse it out of principle.
• Simulacra 11mo ago
  I want as little AI in my life as possible, and I certainly want zero of it forced on me.
• elAhmo 11mo ago
  It is just a question of how long can Mozilla hold its ground with useless initiatives like this which are not what their core user base wants. Firefox and Thunderbird, that is it. Everything else was just a ridiculous time and money sink which should've just been spent on those core products.
• exploderate 11mo ago
  What, of course we do? Summarizing, explaining pages directly, without copying to another app. Reading pages out aloud. Maybe even orchestrating research sessions, by searching and organizing...
• anuramat 11mo ago
  counterpoint: I want AI in firefox there's so much stuff that could get much better if they invested more in AI features -- tab grouping, translation, ad blockers; why are people so triggered? because it might end up being bad?
  • jajuuka 11mo ago
    AI is unfortunately an umbrella term which people can project what they want on to. For reasonable people like yourself it's a tool to accomplish tasks. While for someone else it might be CoPilot showing up frequently and they don't disable or turn off the notifications and just get continually frustrated.
    • anuramat 11mo ago
      so why not give mozilla the benefit of the doubt? why assume that it's necessarily gonna be a slopfest? I'm not exactly optimistic, but it could be good, I do want those features, and I'm not gonna switch to something like chrome
  • PanoptesYC 11mo ago
    Based on the main demographic that normally jumps to Firefox, it would at least be a good idea for them to make the features opt in rather than opt out. Most of this stuff is on by default. I'm curious about what you think AI would do for those features? I've never had issues with ads after just installing stock uBlock Origin, and local translation is already available and works great for me across the web. I'm not sure what AI would do for tab grouping. Are you envisioning having 100+ tabs and then telling an AI assistant to sort it all out for you?
    • anuramat 11mo ago
      > good idea for them to make the features opt in true, but that's not the same as "nobody wants AI"; them fucking it up once shouldn't mean that they should drop the entire idea; by this logic they should stop making browsers altogether the only thing actually pissing me off about this is the selection popup, everything else is just yet another (useless) button in a menu > local translation is already available and it's already "AI" > I'm not sure what AI would do for tab grouping ... they already have a "suggest more tabs" thing that does exactly this using a local model; it's insanely slow, low quality, doesn't use gpu, but the idea is nice. I'm hoping they will continue working on it, as managing tabs across multiple windows is not exactly what I want to spend my time on, and it's exactly the type of a problem LLMs are perfect for > never had issues with ads it could always be better; there's always a certain amount of sites that either don't work at all or still show ads, and I imagine you could use a local VLM to hide elements based on the actual rendered result; same with cookie banners, annoying sign-in prompts, and so on -- how is this not the coolest thing ever? as long as you have like 8gb (v/u)ram, you could immediately unshittify most of the web
• zgk7iqea 11mo ago
  Firefox is dead. You need an insurmountable amount of configuration to even make it bearable and there is non-user respecting settings and telemetry everywhere. Ads, too. It's not something you can recommend, every site is broken and Mozilla rather likes to spend it's money on [1] discouraging human translators and [2] giving people free coffee on "Browser Raves" in Berlin instead. It's a shadow of its former self. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/717446 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/717446 [2] https://www.instagram.com/p/DPn_Re5AAkN/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DPn_Re5AAkN/
  • metabagel 11mo ago
    > every site is broken If a site is broken, it's likely due to blocking of trackers. In the URL bar, click on the shield icon and disable the slider "Enhanced Tracking Protection". But yeah, that can be annoying. Google is an advertising company. I don't understand choosing to use their browser if you can avoid it.
    • zgk7iqea 11mo ago
      Mozilla is an advertising company too. In terms of breakage, Im talking about more fundamental things like missing APIs and wrong rendering.
• jajuuka 11mo ago
  I want AI in Firefox. Blog disproven.
• natnatenathan 11mo ago
  The reason I don't want AI integrated into my browser (or really anything else) is that the mental model for big tech moved from "providing value" to "capturing value" about 15 years ago, and I expect they will try to use this integration in an attempt to build a layer between the customer and all downstream services (stores, banks, information) so they can extract some form of tax on every transaction (ads, micro-fees), all while consolidating data about me to create new sources of revenue. I am one of those 'bright minds' who has wasted their talent improving marketing conversion by 0.001% instead of working to cure cancer. (Let's be honest, improvements are way better than 0.001%, I am good at my job).
• knowitnone3 11mo ago
  All Mozilla cares about is how to slurp your data. They are just a unit of Google with a different name.
• whitehexagon 11mo ago
  Even if LLMs seem to have reached their limits, and are no longer on the feature path towards AGI, I have a fundamental (possibly irrational) dislike for anything labeled AI, just in case this does become a stepping stone towards AGI. On this principle I will not make use of any service, or buy any product, that associates itself with AI, and inserts itself into my life without invitation. In fact, I would like to see a basic human right that allows us sheeps to opt out of anything AI related, or anything with forced advertising or digital currency for that matter.
  • tucnak 11mo ago
    The plural form of "sheep" is simply "sheep."
• fruitworks 11mo ago
  I do. I find the translation features useful
• topaz0 11mo ago
  Lots of commenters replying with 'actually some people want this', or 'actually I want this'. Two points on that. First, OP addresses this by noting that when mozilla asked the community what they wanted, the replies from the community were overwhelmingly opposed to any sort of AI integration in the browser. That at least indicates that the people who are actively following firefox development are substantially against this kind of feature. It's not just "I and the people I talk to don't want this" -- clearly a very important subset of firefox power users don't want it. In other words, the people that are actively going out of their way to choose firefox now, would actively dislike having the browser move in this direction. Sure, maybe the idea is that there are people out there who are longing to be one fewer click away from chatgpt, who is actively choosing their browser based on having access to such things... to which I say... really??? But more to the point, that's probably not the kind of user who will choose firefox over whatever corporate-captured competitor is adding chatbots to their browser yesterday. Second, my personal position, which seems to be echoed by some other commenters, is that, whether or not people do want this, they shouldn't want it. It is bad for users and for the world to have it available, it will make the web worse as sites are rewritten to cater to the bots, and it's going to have to be ripped out in a few years anyway when it becomes clear that the true costs of this stuff are unsustainable.
• beezle 11mo ago
  I go back to pre-Firefox Mozilla browsers. What I want is faster, less bloat and far better memory management - a corrorlary is probably 'fix all outstanding bugs'. Were it me, I'd put a moratorium of three years on adding anything new, AI in particular. As a beta user I update often: 146.0b1: 83M download. 125.0b1(Apr 2024) 61M 100.0b1(Feb 2022) 53M. 75.0b1(Apr 2020) 49M Video in particular is the memory killer as Firefox appears unable to properly reclaim after watching and closing tabs. It is not long before Firefox is pushing 10GB used. Twitter is also a killer.
• nathias 11mo ago
  why not? chatGPT frontend/ux is terrible, there should be thousands of alternatives
• _23sd 11mo ago
  >What strikes me as odd is the decision to position itself as just another AI‑enabled web browser, picking a fight with big techs and better‑funded startups whose users are less hostile (and sometimes enthusiastic) about adding AI to web browsing. By this logic why have a web browser at all if it means competing with better-funded rivals? Firefox got started "picking a fight with" Microsoft at the height of its power, the asymmetry didn't stop them then. But Firefox users at the time were a group that was excited for new ideas, not hostile. Now the project spends years blocking useful stuff like installable web apps while the vocal part of the userbase treats every new feature or API as proof that Mozilla is a mere puppet of Google.
• antonyh 11mo ago
  How much is BigAI paying Moz to integrate these things? I has to be about the dollar surely?
• vmesel 11mo ago
  Muito bom ver um texto de um Brasileiro em numero 1 aqui! Parabéns Rodrigo!
• 4ggr0 11mo ago
  i see a lot of dismissive comments towards Firefox in general in this thread, so i just wanted to mention that i use it since over a decade on all of my devices. on desktop devices i've recently switched to Zen which has rekindled my love for FF. not that i stopped loving it before, but it feels nice to use a completely different UI after all this time.
• submeta 11mo ago
  I love AI in the right context, but the current trend of turning every otherwise solid product into an AI tool is diluting their core value at best, and damaging them at worst. Take Replit, for example. Today I only had my iPad with me and wanted to experiment with some programming languages I have always wanted to learn. I opened Replit and was confused to find the file browser completely hidden. All I saw was a chat window, just another agentic coding interface similar to many others. Or Zed, a wonderful editor and IDE that now seems determined to become a mix of Cursor and Slack. And now Firefox. Please, product managers: build APIs and let me connect my preferred AI agent to your tool, but do not turn the entire product into an AI experience. It risks transforming something genuinely useful into something close to unusable.
• Workaccount2 11mo ago
  Firefox somehow fell into the hole of feature-pack in an effort to save itself. Firefox instead desperately needs to focus on making it a high performance browser that people enjoy using for.....browsing. They can start with fixing the spell check, which is hilariously awful for 2008. And we are in 2025. Signed, a 20 year user.
  • rpgbr 11mo ago
    I wish they rely more on OS features, like the built-in, system-wide spell check. I know it's a bigger task for them, since Firefox runs on multiple OSes, but maybe it's worth it. It dreads me how “un-macOS” Firefox feels, and I guess this feeling extends to Windows, Linux and elsewhere.
    • wilsonnb3 11mo ago
      In Windows-land everything is so inconsistent that it doesn’t really stand out like it does on MacOS. 97% of Windows users wouldn’t notice if it followed OS conventions and the remaining 3% would complain that it was following the current conventions instead of copying Word 2003 :)
    • paradox460 11mo ago
      Firefox has always felt rather bad on Mac. Ages ago they made Camino, which was basically "aqua Firefox" and it was nice.
    • ethmarks 11mo ago
      Is it really that big of a task? More so than maintaining custom spellcheck dictionaries in every supported language? Even if they only implemented OS spellcheck compatibility on MacOS and Windows and just used the existing custom spellcheck on other OSes, that'd still be a huge improvement and they'd only have to do the work for two OSes rather than every OS that Firefox supports.
  • noisy_boy 11mo ago
    They can add features that help with browsing. E.g. they can steal the workspaces idea from Vivaldi. Or the side by side split window idea which is great for comparisons. Or adding a light weight mode which is somewhere between full fledged and text reader modes. There are so many improvements that can make the browsing experience significantly better. I wish they picked at least some of these things instead of stuffing AI in yet another sidebar.
• theoldgreybeard 11mo ago
  Mozilla will never be able to compete with Google, Microsoft or OpenAI - heck even Perplexity - for AI features in a browser. They shouldn't even try. I've been test driving Waterfox and at this point I don't think I'll be going back.
• egorfine 11mo ago
  I think they're damned if they do ("who the fuck wants AI in everything") and damned if they don't ("Mozilla is so irrelevant they didn't even tried the AI race")
  • esskay 11mo ago
    It's a browser. A browser does not need AI baked in. Extensions/addons? Sure, go for it, the more the merrier. But forcing it on people was always going to be a daft move, especially for Mozilla who have completely lost their whole "We're not as bad as Google" schtick over the last few years.
• MangoToupe 11mo ago
  I wouldn't mind an AI ad-blocker. I just don't want it to futz with the actual content.
• ineptech 11mo ago
  The #1 thing I want from Firefox is for it to keep existing in the long term, as a hedge against Google's monopoly. Burning capital on hardware-intensive AI features to get FF from 1% market share to 2% market share would endanger that, no matter how useful the features might be.
  • everfree 11mo ago
    Firefox development is funded almost entirely out of Google's massive donations to Mozilla. For Google, it's no more than a regulatory hedge - something they can point at and say that Chromium and Webkit are not a duopoly. But the flip side is that if Firefox were to ever become a real threat, Google pulls funding and Firefox is toast. So if we want Firefox to ever seriously compete with Google products, the first thing we need to do is fund Mozilla. When a company's entire capex comes from a monopolistic competitor that would rather see it dead, any talk about capex is bikeshedding.
• vaadu 11mo ago
  I want a browser to prioritize speed, standards, stability and security. All other features should come via add-ons. Plus, if I want an AI in my browser I don't want it locked to Mozilla's AI.
  • everfree 11mo ago
    What do you mean by "locked to Mozilla's AI"? Mozilla doesn't host an AI chat bot to my knowledge.
• squarefoot 11mo ago
  For what is worth the opinion of one user, I want AI to be available when I need it as external loadable module (extension? plugin?), not bundled in everything no matter if I use it or not because I know it will eventually get in the way. If Mozilla is being offered money by AI companies to bundle it (Google search agreement rings a bell?) then they'll likely adopt it regardless of users opinion, but hopefully Firefox derivatives such as LibreWolf and others will remove that.
• roughly 11mo ago
  > Mozilla, after all, likely has a clearer view of the whole user base. This assertion is relying on facts not in evidence.
• DrSiemer 11mo ago
  If it's really hidden in its own special tab and NEVER comes out unwanted, I can see some benefits. It's just not a very good fit for Firefox. I assume it would run on a cloud service, which is very much a privacy issue. Especially because it appears to be something "free", making my data the product.
• insane_dreamer 11mo ago
  Google has an "AI Overview" whenever you search for something, and this is probably what Mozilla wants to enable. I think your average person will find it useful. Whether it's a good thing or not is hard to say. It's great when it's a simple question and not critical ("what is a hybrid golf club?") -- much faster than getting links and scanning the pages of wherever you are linked to. It's not great in that it 1) reduces traffic to websites producing the content that the LLMs depend on; 2) LLM hallucinates; 3) the information is actually critical and you should be researching it more in depth.
• zhdc1 11mo ago
  Contrarian here. I've fell in love with Firefox's AI Chatbox sidebar. It's extremely helpful to have Gemini immediately available to help with translating and summarizing text.
• SamDc73 11mo ago
  I've been a Firefox user for 5 years or so and I can tell you: yes no one needs AI in Firefox especially that Firefox users tend to be on the privacy conscious side of things But I don't blame Mozilla though, cause are loosing market share, and maybe they think this is a way to gain more market share?
• codyb 11mo ago
  I use Firefox Developer Edition as my daily driver and it's a nice experience. I think there's an AI option in the settings I have turned off? Wolud I don't see how AI would improve my experience, although I have found myself using the fast answer AI summaries in DuckDuckGo a bit more over time. My initial inclination is to root for a less busy browser.
• Bender 11mo ago
  I can only speak for myself. I do not want yet more bloat added to applications. With that bloat comes more vulnerabilities, maybe intentional or otherwise. "Ooopsie did we leak your ______ to the world? Gosh, we're so sorry." Enough already, just be a web browser. Keep it simple with the only dependency being the site I am visiting.
• ath3nd 11mo ago
  [dead]
• busymom0 11mo ago
  The only place I can think of where I might actually find AI useful but AI is simply not there yet is for the browser to analyze the page super quickly and remove junk - ads, analytics, cookie prompts, too much extra spacing, "AI mode" buttons, the microphone button on YouTube search, YouTube Shorts and community posts etc. Basically, I should be able to tell AI to remove something and it should be able to do it instantly. The current AI is not there yet at least not in terms of speed.
• webdoodle 11mo ago
  I don't want AI to have any of my data. Past, present or future.
• everfree 11mo ago
  I use AI in Firefox all the time. Obviously it seems like I'm in a minority. * I summarize articles. * When I need more context to understand an article, I ask AI what I'm missing. * When I'm writing up something important, I ask AI to proofread it for me. * When I'm using productivity web apps, I ask AI to help me learn the features. * When I'm filling out convoluted forms, I ask AI what the writer could have possibly intended. Non-exhaustive list. Each of these things has resulted in huge leaps in my productivity. Instead of using Firefox, I should probably be using something like the ChatGPT Atlas browser - except it's super important to me to use a browser that is open source and respects my privacy, lets me opt out from the Chromium hegemony, and allows me full control not only over which AI agent I use, but also full control over the browser itself. With Firefox's AI features, only the data I want sent to an AI gets sent to an AI, and I can have confidence that the rest of my data stays private. The real key for me is that Firefox's AI features are unobtrusive. They show up when I invoke them, then go away when I don't want to see them anymore. The Mozilla team seems to have struck a perfect balance with that so far, even going so far as to add "turn this off permanently" options directly in every AI-related shortcut and menu. If you don't want to use AI in your browser, it's not like you even have to dig through the settings. Just click the button that shows up. Technically speaking, this is actually more annoying for people who do use the AI features - in a reversal to the usual trope, the AI users are the ones forced to stare at a menu item that's useless to them all day. As for me, if other browsers start to really leapfrog Firefox in terms of the useful kind of AI integration that accelerates my daily browsing tasks, I'll probably reluctantly switch away at some point. Thankfully, the vast majority of this can probably be done at the extension level, and it probably should be, rather than being directly integrated into the browser itself. That would be a win/win for everyone in my book. I just really don't want to give up Firefox or give up my productivity tools. And before anyone asks, I did not use AI to write or proofread any part of this post. This one's all me.
  • Krssst 11mo ago
    > The Mozilla team seems to have struck a perfect balance with that so far, even going so far as to add "turn this off permanently" options directly in every AI-related shortcut and menu. It's weird that so few people point this out and instead go straight to about:config. I don't use LLMs and I think too that is the best approach they could take: those that want to use AI can, and those that never want it can disable it immediately.
• abhi555shek 11mo ago
  We're quickly moving from AI being a work helper to being the worst distraction of all times! Why Mozilla, why?
• ajkjk 11mo ago
  I think the underlying motivation here is that employees at Mozilla want to deliver big projects to get promoted / recognized / advance their careers. The fundamental "cause" for the misanthropic behavior is a perverse incentive structure. In my head I associate it with the "OKR" framework: when you're evaluated on "delivering recognizable projects" (regardless of value; it benefits everybody to pretend they have value) instead of "doing your job well" (whatever it is, whether glamorous or not) then you end up with bizarre corporate behaviors like this. It starts at the top when executives are incentivized to run the company this way and it trickles down to everyone else--since they need big deliverables, their underlings are accountable for delivering parts of those, and then the underlings' underlings for the next part, etc... and everybody is especially rewarded if they can invent recognizable deliverables, because the whole chain above them sees that they can benefit from promoting / hyping up that work. Which feeds the whole lie: everyone is pretending to be valuable in the same way and benefits from everyone else also pretending. But at no point does it serve the users, because the whole thing is built on a foundational cognitive dissonance: since "doing well at work" looks like "delivering big results", everybody is pressured to buy into the lie that the big results are the best thing to do be doing. So even if nobody really believes it completely, everybody has to believe it a little bit, just to survive, and then it becomes ambiently true even if nobody even likes it. None of this would be possible in a world where there wasn't so much free money going around. If you have to do an actually good job by the users to survive in a competitive environment, you have no time to waste on on doing a fake good job to impress the board/executives/big donors. The funny thing is: I'm pretty sure this type of incentive structure came into existence because of the bizarre dynamics of public companies and short-termism: big deliverables looks like delivering value aka the stock price stays good, so public companies are incentivized to operate that way. But now it's such a cult (everyone does OKRs!) that it infects even the ostensibly-nonprofit organizations as well; it's baked into the culture of bad leadership that Google exports everywhere else. (Probably there are a few other things driving this framework also. For one thing "big deliverables" are good for salespeople to have something to talk about: the big purchasers are just as clueless about what makes software good for the users as everybody else at their level is. And probably it also comes from executives need things to impress their buddies with. But I refuse to believe that most of the executives trumpeting AI initiatives genuinely believe in them; even if a few do, I'm convinced that most of them are just pretending because they have to to keep their jobs.) This is why companies run by "engineer"-mindset people are so inspiring in comparison. Just once I'd like to see a big corp do the actual right work instead of all this pretend fake-ass BS. But it feels impossible to change while somehow they are still getting rich off of it. There's so much free money in this industry that idiots just do shitty work and get rich anyway because competition isn't strong enough to destroy them. Sigh. And of course sometimes they get lucky and make something good by accident, too. Or just make something shitty but stick ads in it and for some reason that works because for mysterious and probably-grifty reasons nobody can compete on preventing that either. Thanks for reading my thesis on why the tech industry is so disappointing.
• maerF0x0 11mo ago
  Doesn't torbrowser use firefox? I wonder how a journalist could trust it if there's some obscure llm/ai involved?
  • everfree 11mo ago
    Torbrowser is a fork of Firefox, not a user. I'm not going to bother looking this up because pigs aren't flying yet, so I'll just state it as fact: the torbrowser fork does not include any of Firefox's AI code or functionality.
• block_hacks 11mo ago
  [dead]
• phplovesong 11mo ago
  Fuck, AI slop is literally everywhere. You need to go really deep to avoid it these days.
• ratelimitsteve 11mo ago
  if my car comes with the ability to start normally but also an alternate mode where, by deisgn, it explodes and kills my entire family is that providing me with freedom of choice in my automobile experience? am I in control because I have the option to do things I would never under any circumstances actually want to do? or is someone trying to convince me that i'm in charge because I get to pick from a menu they wrote?
• cptskippy 11mo ago
  > They’re calling it “Window AI.” Was this intentional or just a complete lack of attention to detail? Even their own screenshot contradicts this. Does it matter? Yes. "Window AI" suggests there is an AI manager, where as "AI Window" suggests an isolated environment.
• jlarocco 11mo ago
  It kills me that they leave out features desired by more or less everybody (like ad-block), while they add completely superfluous features like AI and Pocket to the core of Firefox. It's a joke. If ad-block has to be a plugin, AI should be a plugin. Let people decide for themselves if they want to AI in their browser.
• dwheeler 11mo ago
  I love having built-in local natural language translation implemented by AI, which Firefox provides. Local models have different properties than remote properties, and natural language translation is a useful thing. AI should be added when it solves a real need, and the risks can be minimized (or at least controlled). The goal shouldn't be to use AI, the goal should be to solve problems for humans.
• nativeit 11mo ago
  Lol. > Could Not Give Kudos >Kudos could not be given to the message for the following reason: > Kudos Flood: You have exceeded the limit of 10 kudoed messages per minute. Enough said. There are simply too many people telling Mozilla to fuck right off for me to Kudo them all.
• visarga 11mo ago
  > I think nobody wants AI in Firefox I think the author does not speak for me
• im3w1l 11mo ago
  I'm certainly open to AI in my browser. It has to be done well though, to be a net positive for the user experience. A local model for naming a tab group or something as I've heard off sounds like a very reasonable thing (though it should be said I wouldn't personally use such a feature as I don't group my tabs at all). I think it's a good thing they are experimenting with this.
• mikkupikku 11mo ago
  Speak for yourself, I do want to see Mozilla experimenting with new features and functionality opened up by new technology. Politically motivated technological stagnation is little more than a slow death, Mozilla should at least be trying new things. And yes, they will get some of it wrong. It's new technology, nobody really knows how to use it yet. Mozilla should be on the forefront of figuring it out.
  • creatonez 11mo ago
    Problem is, a chatbot sidebar isn't something new to try, it's a tired dead-end idea that never delivered any value to the multiple competitors that tried the exact same thing. Firefox's implementation of a chatbot sidebar is especially cookie-cutter because it just plugs into existing LLM APIs, it doesn't make use of local AI the way the alt text generator and local machine translation features do. What were they thinking?
    • burnte 11mo ago
      The absolute last thing I need in my browser is AI. What's it going to do, read the page then rewrite it for me to read? Why would I not just read the page? Is it going to generate images of the webpage for me? AI is a great tool, but it's not useful in every circumstance. Right now product managers are trying to think of any place to shoehorn AI into regardless of it being a good idea or useful just to be able to push out "AI powered!" features. Putting ChatGPT and Claude in a sidebar is absolutely not an innovation. 25 years ago I made a sidebar extension that let you add webcam feeds to a sidebar so you could keep an eye on multiple internet cams easily. It was literally a webpage in a sidebar that you just added the cam URLs to. This is the exact same thing, except an LLM. I do not need an AI browser, an AI calculator, an AI hammer (it tells you about the nail you're about to hit!), or an AI lamp (it detects when it's dark and asks if you want to turn on a light!).
      • mikkupikku 11mo ago
        > What's it going to do, read the page then rewrite it for me to read? In some cases I do find that useful, but more generally I find that having a quick chat about a document after reading it is a good way to interrogate my own understanding of the document. I agree that it's probably not for everybody. But I do think that by putting tools like this out there, Firefox users may find unanticipated uses for it, which in turn may inform more thoughtfully implemented futures in the future. You've got to walk before you can run.
• lone-cloud 11mo ago
  I would personally never use an out-of-the-box browser because of this. Instead of Firefox I use(d) LibreWolf which strips out all the Mozilla trash. I'd argue that all gecko-based browsers are "bad" and Mozilla has been largely incompetent for many, many years now with failing to modernize their browser engine. As I remember, their current CEO fired the entire team responsible for a modernizing their browser codebase in order to focus on the type of crap described in this article. I strongly believe that by far the best browser out there right now is Brave. However, as with Firefox, it's pretty terrible out-of-the-box and you have to add "local company policy" files in order to be able to strip out all of its web3, AI and other crap that nobody wants. In a way, all modern browsers are the same. I can't wait for more serious competition although I'm doubtful that's it's really possible due to the sheer complexity of the problem, but I do realize that there are some serious contenders coming up in the next few years.
  • exographicskip 11mo ago
    Ladybird might be a good alternative in a couple years
• mmaunder 11mo ago
  "We see a lot of promise in AI browser features making your online experience smoother, more helpful, and free from the everyday disruptions that break your flow." You can almost taste the hand-waviness here. Smoother, helpful, free from disruptions - has absolutely no meaning, and that's intentional because they have no idea what the actual value prop is of having "AI" - whatever functionality and capability that actually is - in the browser.
• 51Cards 11mo ago
  Please make AI disappear altogether until I want it. No pop-ups, no floating "Help me..." in fields, no spinning flashing icons on toolbars. I submit feedback on all products that do this that I would like a way to turn it all off. AI is useful when I want it, otherwise it's just annoying and gets in my way.
• butz 11mo ago
  Got to hold on just for a few more months until Ladybird release. Servo, hopefully will be still catching up. Worst case scenario - move to Dillo.
• ulbu 11mo ago
  why not AI integrations that are not built-in but rather externalized like LSP?
• themicahshell 11mo ago
  The only people who want AI in anything are AI companies...
• boombapoom 11mo ago
  we respect your privacy, except for when we dump it into a publicly shared LLM
• mehdibl 11mo ago
  May be Mozilla have a point. Chat apps, are replacing a lot the old way we consume information and search. That is mostly made thru browser. So I see the vision is follow this transformation to keep market share and offer an alternative to big players. Mozilla and Firefox loosing market share and revenue too and that could bite back.
• duxup 11mo ago
  While back I figured I should support mozilla and I signed up for their VPN. It worked for a while but it felt like a hacky ad-on ontop of mulvad and then it just wouldn't work a lot of the time and I gave up. I just like their browser, I don't need any of this other stuff.
• rjurney 11mo ago
  I've tried the Perplexity browser and... I can't figure out what it does or how it is better?
• mattmaroon 11mo ago
  Ugh I hate it. The amount of times I accidentally trigger the ui to summarize the page is so annoying
• ph4rsikal 11mo ago
  I want to pull in AI on my own terms and don't want to feel I am constantly watched.
• midtake 11mo ago
  I'm tired of software getting out of its lane. For an OS, I just want it to run shit. For a browser, load web shit. Why does it need to do AI? Can Firefox do the bare minimum? It doesn't even have dark mode, which Chrome has had for years. I don't want pocket, "Normandy" (botnet), Mozilla Sync, Mozilla shilling a VPN and checking all my emails against darknet lists, none of that, certainly not by default. Just render web fast, don't phone home, give me dark mode and a decent reader mode, put fucking RSS back in.
• gespadas 11mo ago
  I really hope Mozilla open their eyes and ears and LISTEN to their USERS... no one wants AI in Firefox, all we want is a better web browser. Mozilla, you are still on time to reroute your efforts to regain the users you'd lost by crap like this.
• racl101 11mo ago
  At first I thought it was a bit tragic how Apple kinda fumbled AI. Now I think maybe they might have an edge if they were to be one of the only big companies not trying to push it into their products. Especially MacOS.
• TZubiri 11mo ago
  Nono, I want AI in my browser, I put chatgpt.com on the address bar, and I get AI in my browser.
• eduction 11mo ago
  I’d love an ai I could ask to pull up a web page I have a scattered memory of - I know what it was about but not the name of the site it was from, not if it’s open in a tab or if I closed it an hour ago, or maybe I bookmarked it. Even better if I can ask things like “can you find that movie review about some robert Downey junior film I read maybe a month ago?” Whether it will actually do any of those things is another question of course.
• hendersoon 11mo ago
  Google approached this the right way. No, not with "ai mode", that sucks. With the Chrome dev tools MCP. You allow AI to control the browser if the user opts-in and sets it up.
• anthem2025 11mo ago
  [dead]
• riversflow 11mo ago
  M
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• moron4hire 11mo ago
  I mean, 52 people is a significant proportion of Mozilla's entire userbase, so...
• guestbest 11mo ago
  I looked at the top 25 grossing apps on iOS and Android. There is only one explicitly ai app and it’s the one that ran a Super Bowl commercial, ChatGPT. I don’t see the demand from regular consumers. When or if it grosses top in the charts then it arrived. It’s more windows 3.0 than windows 95.
• Fanofilm 11mo ago
  The onus is on FireFox to deliver "the killer feature". No killer feature, nobody will bother with it. Mozilla needs to shift into entrepreneurial innovation.
• Animats 11mo ago
  Unless the AI in a browser can delete all ads for me, I don't want it.
• wannabag 11mo ago
  Another Mozilla-made-a-decision thread, another list of complaints. I'm a happy Firefox user since it showed up as an alternative to internet explorer. I tried Chrome once or twice but always came back and stuck with Firefox. I don't trust Google for anything and don't want them to rule over the web. Firefox works, it has worked for me all these years and continues to do so. I still believe in them and their mission even if they have to take Google money to exist. I think that complaints here are just making things worse for Mozilla, how about helping out instead of whining about every little thing. They're trying, that's a lot more than can be said about a whole lot of other actors out there. Firefox team, if you read this, you rock! Thank you for giving me a great browser.
• squigz 11mo ago
  Lots of people saying things like, "This is not novel; come up with new ways to use this technology!" as if that's easy. Well, the brilliant thing here is, if it's so easy to come up with novel applications of new technology... Firefox is open source! Go make it yourself!
• mmis1000 11mo ago
  I don't think ai (or whatever features) is a bad thing unless it's on your way or designed to do damage to you (hey, I am saying you, Microsoft, get off your onedrive and copilot bullshit. I really don't need it to eat my network and memory when I absolutely don't want it). Features are supposed to be helpful when you need it. Instead of block your way and pretend it's the only way you can do it, or designed to annoying you to make you turn it on accidentally.
• skwee357 11mo ago
  I don’t want AI in my browser. I don’t want AI in my thermostat app. I don’t want AI showed into my face on every website I land. It honestly feels like a plague worse than ads. At least ads I can block in various ways.
• aljgz 11mo ago
  This is going to be disliked, but it's my opinion: I believe being hardline on the organizations and products that actually respect users and choices leads to much worse outcome. I'm using Firefox, Edge, and Chrome on phone and desktop. My main browser is Firefox on both, and I use the two others only when needed. I trust Mozilla to be more aligned with my needs than any company that creates a free tool to keep users in their ecosystem. Those companies are doing what they are supposed to do, and as a person, it's my responsibility to use what aligns with my values. But it's important to understand that I belong to one of the many nieche types of users, and if I expect Mozilla to only target my nieche, the userbase will shrink so much that it will be unsustainable, sounds familiar? So, as a long-time user of Firefox, I generally and cautiosly trust Mozilla, I support them when they try new features while keeping the user in control, and I don't think the evolution of products have to be stopped because some of us are too stongly attached to the old ways.
• cyanydeez 11mo ago
  AI = local = cool AI = cloud = insecure bullshit
• jameslk 11mo ago
  I want it, but I have ideas in mind that aren’t just a chat window bolted to a browser. Once upon a time there was a popular Firefox extension called Firebug. Everyone loved it because it made web dev so much easier. Devs helped drive the adoption of Firefox because they preferred the easier dev experience over IE6, which meant websites were built for Firefox over IE. We’re facing a new paradigm for dev with AI. Where’s the rebirth of Firebug built for this new experience to help drive adoption again? Make web dev much easier on Firefox and more devs will flock to it.
• anildash 11mo ago
  I actually don't think this is true. I think a lot of folks who are (understandably) angry at the Big AI companies want people not to want AI in Firefox. Which is a slightly different problem. https://www.anildash.com/2025/11/14/wanting-not-to-want-ai/ https://www.anildash.com/2025/11/14/wanting-not-to-want-ai/
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• tsoukase 11mo ago
  AI in an open source project will be horrible. Proprietary AI services backed by billions, hiring top programming, back/front/ui talent lead by ambitious dreamers are already problematic at most limited. A bunch of loose free lancers in their night time are not the best team to prepare a responsible and competitive AI gateway.
• rldjbpin 11mo ago
  AI or not, feels like the focus in the past few years for the browser has been to do catch-up on the trendy feature rather than improving the core experiences. TBF some of these features are also unique and something i cherish when browsing the web (e.g. container tabs). however, the devs must ask why every "new" browser is just a chromium fork in the end. there should be a try to pivot to the core experience than feature parity to see if it actually brings more people over.
• noisebuffer 11mo ago
  To create an AI that people will want to use, we need people to use it so we get better data, improve it, and learn how to control models. It’s a catch-22. I definitely don’t want AI tabs in Firefox but I can see why all this might be necessary because of massive potential for a superintelligence to solve problems or open new doors we didn’t know existed. But then we have to ask ourselves if these new pathways for humanity are so far removed from what humans can accomplish on their own, is there pride in a new revolution akin to the human derived pride in what we have accomplished on our own for the Industrial Revolution, for example, or even just petrol or nuclear power discovery?
• m-p-3 11mo ago
  Personally I don't mind if the purpose is increased privacy and that the processing is done locally. Some great examples are the local translation engine and I believe they also added or are in the process to add a small engine that can describe images and provide caption on-demand, which is a great step towards accessibility.
• bluecenterlight 11mo ago
  [dead]
• BuddyPickett 11mo ago
  I do. It's nice to have when you want it and ready to not use if you don't. The more options the better. It's also nice when it's built in so you don't have to take extra steps to use it when you want to use it.
• BuddyPickett 11mo ago
  I like having more options and AI is just one more option.