After the controversial news shared earlier this week by Mozilla’s new CEO that Firefox will evolve into “a modern AI browser,” the company now revealed it is working on an AI kill switch for the open-source web browser.
On Tuesday, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation, the company behind the beloved Firefox web browser used by almost all GNU/Linux distributions as the default browser.
In his message as new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo stated that Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software while remaining the company’s anchor, and that Firefox will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.
What was not made clear is that Firefox will also ship with an AI kill switch that will let users completely disable all the AI features that are included in Firefox. Mozilla shared this important update earlier today to make it clear to everyone that Firefox will still be a trusted web browser.
Why not just ship it without any of the AI stuff and give users the option to install and use it instead of bloating the application? This also confirms that the stuff is essentially OPT OUT instead of OPT IN
The bubble is AI and they want some of that bubble investor money is my guess, so they put optional AI
In their defense a very tiny percentage of users even open options and of those an even smaller actually change stuff.
Maybe slighlty different for Firefox as probably more power user use it than other random programs. But basically if something is not enabled by default, it doesn’t exist.
Because they’re counting on people who know nothing about technology using the AI stuff when it’s placed in front of them.
Sounds like they will be opt in, not opt out
I don’t see why there is a big outrage. Sure I’m not a fan of the AI features and I certainly will disable them but it’s tot like they’re forced upon me. Some people like (want) AI in the browser and good for them, this makes the browser better and easier to use for them. For me, it doesn’t change my experience at all
(Commented this separately on purpose)
Come to think of it, I do enjoy the translation feature in Firefox
The alt-text tagging is pretty amazing according to my sister (blind), too.
I’ve been thinking the same thing. The online tech community is a very small part of a much larger pie and they need to serve multiple audiences. As long as it can be turned off and truly be off, who cares?
People don’t trust that it can be truly turned off and that it won’t act maliciously in some way. That’s really the crux of the whole saga. We’re at a point where phone companies are getting survey results that say that 80% of users either don’t care about AI nor use it or find that it actively makes their user experience worse.
Did those people forget this is am open source browser and they can actually check it’s doing what it says it’s doing?
And if they’re that paranoid that they don’t trust the pre-compiled binaries, they can just compile them themselves.
This discussion is completely absurd to me.
Quite honestly, I don’t think the average person even knows what open source means. They just know that Mozilla, like every other company, is shoving AI into their product, and that AI has either been useless or actively harmful to their user experience.
This should just have been an extension. Having this as a core integration makes the browser have more surface area for attack.
If compromised, it won’t be an easy fix like disabling/removing an extension.
Looks like execs behind closed doors are just trying to water down the Firefox brand until it’s hollow and then jump ship.
Many people love AI, I have a lot of acquaintances who actively seek out the best “AI browser” whatever that means. It makes sense for mozilla not to fall out this bandwagon just yet.