3 mo. ago • 90%

Mozilla roll out first AI features in Firefox Nightly

blog.mozilla.org Choose how you want to navigate the web with Firefox | The Mozilla Blog

As Mozilla envisions Firefox’s future, we are focused on building a browser that empowers you to choose your own path and gives you the freedom to explor

Firefox @lemmy.ml Mozilla rolls out first AI features in Firefox Nightly, and theyre actually useful.

Technology @lemmy.world Mozilla roll out first AI features in Firefox Nightly

33 comments

What purpose is served by having AI built-in to the browser?

31
- Baked in AI makes C Suite and shareholders happy. That's about it.
  
  29
- The implementation doesn't sound terrible.
  
  It's opt-in
  
  It's basically a sidebar chat window
  
  So if you already use GPT for day-to-day, it may be a welcome experience. If you don't, don't opt in.
  
  I'm skeptical of GPT add-ons, bit at least this was done in a low-bloat opt-in way (which allows Mozilla to bring in revenue (probably)).
  
  6
  
  Know what's even more opt in? An official extension. Installed only if someone wants it.
  
  I switched to LibreWolf and Mull a few months ago in preparation for this. I'll come back to Firefox if the investors pull their collective heads from their asses.
  
  1
- You can skip search engines sometimes
  
  1
  
  ... by submitting queries to another website that only does what's ruining search engines.
  
  9
  
  I can skip the search engine and go right to the bad suggestions, finally!
  
  6
- "Move all my rf resesrch tabs to a new window"
  
  1
Ah yes, the update nobody actually wants...

29
- nobody
  
  I think you might be in for a rude awakening.
  
  3
  
  For me it's useful, depending how it's implemented. Being able to say "summarize this article" or "summarize this ToS and call out anything that's anti consumer" is how I use chatgpt
  
  3
Looks like the "local AI only" idea was purged in favor of some Big Tech stuff that can give Mozilla some fat cash for promoting their services! Mozilla's second (or third idk at this point lol) downfall is looking really strong with all their recent decisions. WebKit is another independent engine that still doesn't seem to suck in terms of enshittification but it's basically not used anywhere except Apple ecosystem. Chromium is getting a full monopoly yay.

28
- I do self host several AI applications for myself on a low end device and I think for most lowend even mid devices local AI is unfeasible. Nowadays is too much resource heavy and times are too long without high end devices.
  
  For my computer generating a description of a picture (one of the firefox new features) could easily take up to 5-10 minutes with the cpu at 100%. That's just not viable for doing while browsing.
  
  Anyway I would love for firefox to open source the server side of this. So in case someone have s computer powerful enough they could do it locally if they want to.
  
  12
  
  Still adding proprietary and actually evil AI providers is a questionable decision.
  
  7
- Well I'm guessing they actually did testing on local AI using a 4GB and 8GB RAM laptop and realized it would be an awful user experience. It's just too slow.
  
  I wish they rolled it in as an option though.
  
  8
  
  They wanted to use fast small language models, not LLMs like Llama
  
  5
- WebKit does exist for Linux, Gnome Web has been quite a nice experience however it still lacks support for most extensions (however some Firefox extensions do work). The real world performance is still a bit lacking but its close to Firefox on paper and as it continues to update I will probably swap to it. For now its a nice way for me to test if my websites will break on macs (spoiler, WebKit still lacks some stuff).
  
  4
  
  I know about that. I used to use Epiphany myself. The problem is that it's unpopular, still not nearly as good as the other options and there's no cross-platform support. The last one is a big problem because 90% of the market uses Android or Windows.
  
  2
- Their new CEO is a McKinsey consultant so this is pretty much guaranteed.
  
  3
  
  Who is McKinsey?
  
  1
Uggggh mozilla no one wants this

18
- Some people might want this, I just don't get why this has to be built in to the browser, instead of an official add-on.
  
  Especially considering it looks like they just embedded the chatgpt website in an embedded window.
  
  2
So it isn't even local private AI but rather just an Interface for NOT-private LLMs like ChatGPT (which specifically stated, at least at first, that all your queries to it and their responses are being monitored and saved by OpenAI)

14
- Why are they not using their own llamafile ?
  
  0

You've viewed 33 comments.