Tldr: Theyre adding an opt-in alt text generation for blind people and an opt-in ai chat sidebar where you can choose the model used (includes self-hosted ones)
I like how it is opt-in.
Self-hosted and locally run models also goes a long way. 90% of LLMs applications don’t require users to surrender their devices, data, privacy and security to big corporations. But that is exactly how the space is being run right now.
And yet, Mozilla went for the 10% that do violate your privacy and gives your data to the biggest corporations: Google, Microsoft, OpenAI.
What happened to the Mozilla Manifesto?
The alternative is only supporting self hosted LLMs, though, right?
Imagine the scenario: you’re a visually impaired, non-technical user. You want to use the alt-text generation. You’re not going to go and host your own LLM, you’re just going to give up and leave it.
In the same way, Firefox supports search engines that sell your data, because a normal, non-technical user just wants to Google stuff, not read a series of blog posts about why they should actually be using something else.
If it was truly opt-in, it could be an extension. They should not be bundling this with the browser, bloating it more in the process.
AI already has ethical issues, and environmental issues, and privacy issues, and centralization issues. You technically can run your own local AI, but they hook up to the big data-hungry ones out of the box.
Look at the Firefox subreddit. One month ago, people were criticizing the thought of adding AI to Firefox. Two months ago, same thing. Look at the Firefox community. See how many times people requested AI.
If it was truly opt-in, it could be an extension. They should not be bundling this with the browser, bloating it more in the process.
The extension API doesn’t have enough access for this.
You technically can run your own local AI, but they hook up to the big data-hungry ones out of the box.
While it is opt-in and disabled by default, this is the real problem.
Look at the Firefox subreddit. One month ago, people were criticizing the thought of adding AI to Firefox. Two months ago, same thing. Look at the Firefox community. See how many times people requested AI.
I believe what most people are concerned about, including myself, was the AI features being enabled automatically and then having to disable it like every other application would do to inflate metrics.
Because this is opt in like it says in the blog I am ok with it there and disabled.
