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)
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.
The alt text generation is done locally. That was the big justification Mozilla used when they announced the feature.
I’m talking about the non-local ChatGPT stuff.