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As much as I hate AI, I get that they include stuff like that to appease the mainstream users. I would just wish they asked me beforehand if I want these features. At least its pretty unintrusive unlike most other AI implementations right now. And they give an option to remove it, which is nice.
I agree. I was all about to go up in arms about it when I saw that menu but then I was immediately relieved when I saw they’ve put the “Remove AI Chatbot” option right below it. They know their userbase very well and know that even though some people desire AI features to play with, a lot of us find it immediately repugnant and a show stopper so I think it’s an ok way to appease both, provided that the AI wasn’t active in the background until we had a chance to notice this menu and disable it.
As long as they don’t pull a Microsoft and increasingly try to force it down our throats when they realise that nobody wants it.
You are right. And all this Firefox bashing is helping the real bad actors.
Let’s take a realistic look. I think, AI is here to stay. With a few years more AI can be an invaluable assistant of your life. I don’t think the bubble will burst in a way that AI will cease to exist completely.
The important part is, that the AI has to run on your systems in your terms. Nothing you prompt should ever be transferred to anywhere. If that’s the case you have control and that’s okay.
At the moment Mozilla is one of the better actors. Let’s not jump on the bandwagon bash everything just because they changed a sentence in the AGB, while at the same time Google is pushing manifest v3. Lets be really picky about which technology will give us or take our digital sovereignty
What mainstream users? Firefox is tiny in usage compared to Chrome, Edge, Opera, etc. And the people who do use FF use it because they have enough tech knowledge to understand why those other browsers are bad/consumer hostile.
If FF starts catering to the ‘mainstream’ by acting like those other browsers, they’re going to end up shrinking their user base instead of growing it.
This doesn’t appease mainstream users, though…
I hate to break it to you, but we live in a time where the average users uses ChatGPT or Gemini instead of Google or Wikipedia to get information. Most of my coworkers use AI at least to some degree, even the technically more advanced users.
As much as I hate this, we can‘t just ignore it as if this wouldn‘t be the case. We are already in the Dead-Internet-Times and it will only get worse unless the bubble bursts, but even then we won‘t be at a point that we were at before this all started.
I saw that. See where it says “Remove AI Chatbot”? I clicked on that. It’s gone now.
atleast they have the option to remove it
And how long will that stay…
Seeing as you have to set up which model you’re using from an external service and the browser is just making it easier for you to use that external service, probably forever
It’s Mozilla so if it leaves the main menus it will probably be in about:config. They’re annoying in how much boat they’re adding to Firefox but most stuff is still opt out: password manager, profiles, tracking, etc…
Why would they get rid of the option to remove it? What would they get from it?
I’m not anti-ai at all but this sort of thing feels like a security vulnerability to me?
Any website with a malicious prompt injection on it could instruct the ai to scam the user.
Almost like xss but instead of needing malicious user-inputted js, malware targeting the ai can just be written in text so an attacker could put it in a comment or whatever.
I’m not pro AI, but: https://youtu.be/iHrZRJR4igQ Calling this an security vulnerability seems ridiculous
LibreWolf
And if that feels too locked down, WaterFox.
I want to try mobile firefox / and waterfox. But im stuck with Duckduckgo, cause it have a good bookmark system with folders and i can save it to my sd-card, no need for sync or accounts.
I saw that. If you go into about:config and diisable literally everything that has ‘ml’ in the name you can turn this bs off. One day i’ll switch browsers D=
Also it’s really funny to me that publicly all these companies are shouting “AI!” but the engineers seem to know it’s really just machine learning.edit There are also some *.ml strings you can just straight up delete.
Help, now can’t marixst-leninist
And nothing of value was lost.
I did the same thing. I’m happier, but I’m thinking of trying LibreWolf now.
Its a couple of toggles my friend.
they should just make it an extension people can add on instead of baking this shit into the pie
seriously, containers are an extension but ai is mandatory? make it make sense
Make that shit opt in and don’t force install that crap onto my system.
So glad I switched to LibreWolf with how much Firefox is becoming another corporate platform.
It just sends the page to a site of your choosing. It’s not really installing anything. Even the offline AI thing downloads the stuff afaik when you pick languages you want to use
At least it is less obvious than the way chrome is handling AI ‘integrations’. Google is hamfisting AI to the point where chrome is basically a billboard.
“DOES BABY WANT GEMINI?”
“DOES BABY WANT AI MODE?”
“DOES BABY WANT AI SUMMARY FOR 2 MINUTE YOUTUBE VIDEO?”
“I see you clicked no. I’ll remind baby a few days from now”
Time for Librewolf.
And IronFox for Android :v
Have fun with the forced time zone obfuscation, messing up your scheduled messages and timestamps. !waterfox@programming.dev is where it’s at.
forced
Enabled by default and “forced” are two different things. Your comment is misleading.
You have a couple of options:
- Turn off ResistFingerprinting and use something else if you want similar functionality, like CanvasBlocker
- Add trusted domains to
privacy.resistFingerprinting.exemptedDomainsin the about:config page.
When I say “forced,” I mean that you shouldn’t have to go into
about:configto hunt for something that doesn’t even say the phrase “time zone” in it to disable this. It should be openly in the browser’s options. There should also be a warning about this; I read of no such notice when first firing it up. It came off as shady and an unwanted, initially forced “feature” that caused way more problems than it solved.
I’m fine with this. It’s not only optional. Is where I’d never even ick it by accident
This. It’s not like it’s running LLM queries behind your back. It’s not even a popup. Just an option in the menu that will do nothing as long as you don’t click on it.
There’s an option in about:config to turn it off: browser.ml.enable
i can understand this. most articles are designed in order to waste the reader’s time on the site to show more ads. we can can all cry around the fire like we usually do on lemmy when ai comes up, but this was clearly caused by journalism.
my main concern however is bloated browsers. i dont want pocket, or hidden syncing and telemetry, ai and whatever the fuck goes on in the background. takes a lot less to add ecosia and enable cookies for librewolf than debloat firefox.
