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squirrelwithnut ,

As long as I can disable it, sure. Knock yourself out.

MeaanBeaan ,

Anyone have any other good suggestions for Firefox alternatives? Sounds like I may be needing to switch soon.

blackris ,

There are none.

MeaanBeaan ,

Well shit.

Blisterexe ,

why would you need to switch, did you read the article?

Makhno ,

Cause AI = bad

Duh 🤪

MeaanBeaan ,

AI as in machine learning? No I dont think that’s bad. It’s a very useful technology that we’ve already been using for decades in a bunch of different fields. But I’m assuming you’re referring to LLMs which are what’s being integrated into Firefox.

I would argue that LLMs ARE bad. For multiple reasons. At least the big ones run by these giant tech companies.

If you’re locally running one with training data provided by you then I don’t see an issue with that really. (except maybe energy consumption issues. Though I don’t imagine a personal use LLM run locally would draw anywhere near the energy that something like Chat Gpt is drawing.)

I’m very much on the side that believes that what these LLM models do essentially boils down to theft/plagiarism though. So if you disagree with that you may disagree that LLMs are bad.

MeaanBeaan ,

I did. I’m not needing to switch. At least not right now. (hence the ‘may’ in my original comment) But given the Laura Chambers interim CEO thing and now this LLM integration. Mozilla seems to be making moves that I don’t agree with. But as long as they stay true to their key tennents I won’t need to switch. Which would be good. Because I really don’t want to. But I’ve seen a enough good companies become bad companies that I’m weary for the future of the app. So being aware of what alternatives may be out there would be helpful.

cyclonic_affinity ,

I highly recommend everyone making the switch to LibreWolf. It’s a custom version of Firefox that focuses on the things that matter like privacy and security, while cutting out the annoyances that Mozilla loves to add to their browsers.

librewolf.net

MeaanBeaan ,

Oh. This looks great. Thank you for sharing.

set_secret ,

www.waterfox.net

Also Firefox but less shitty.

StarlightDust ,

The new CEO of Mozilla, Laura Chambers, has a background working at all sorts of evil companies like AirBnB and PayPal. Its absolutely no surprise that the company immediately dropped plans to diversify in ethical, unique and privacy friendly ways as soon as she joined.

CEOs getting paid primarily in stock means grifters like this will drop their USP for whatever trend makes the line go up, if it is crypto, NFTs, or AI.

Blisterexe ,

Shes not the new ceo, shes a temporary interim ceo while they find someone better

299792458ms ,

Not going to lie, AI can be a very powerfull tool but the “we want your browsing experience to be divine, but don’t worry we have your back” scares me shitless. Firefox has always had our backs, why do they feel the need to mention it now? Maybe I’m being paranoid but I feel like a browser shoulf just be a browser.

cley_faye ,

Firefox has always had our backs

It’s been going in a less friendly direction for a while. Embedding of mandatory useless extensions, aggressive advertising, deals to display more and more content to more users, disregard for user settings on multiple updates, opt-out telemetry, and now telling you that you’re using it wrong.

Sure, you can navigate through various settings to disable most of these, and check back on updates for settings that toggles back, or are simply renamed and mysteriously got back to their default, intrusive value. But we should not have to do that.

And that’s not even touching the issue with the Mozilla Corporation itself.

Firefox is the alternative browser, but it certainly isn’t there to “have your back”.

Allero ,

Our initial offering will include ChatGPT, Google Gemini, HuggingChat, and Le Chat Mistral, but we will continue adding AI services that meet our standards for quality and user experience.

Is that the same Mozilla that started the Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness?

What in living hell do proprietary and predatory AI services even doing here?

Mozilla just offered users to feed into the very abomination they claim to fight.

Also, for all things “AI”, local is the only way to go if you ever want to have a chance at privacy.

Blisterexe ,

“Our initial offering”

They said in the article theyll also offer the use of self-hosted models later

Allero ,

They didn’t mention it anywhere

Blisterexe ,

Whether it’s a local or a cloud-based model, if you want to use AI, we think you should have the freedom to use (or not use) the tools that best suit your needs.

Ok it doesnt say it directly but you can see where i got it from

Allero ,

Yeah, I got that, but I don’t think they mean that, exactly, otherwise it would be their focus indeed.

But I guess we’ll have to wait and see

AceFuzzLord ,

The way I see AI being implemented into Firefox, regardless of whether it’s gonna be opt-in or out in the future is that they need to keep up with the latest browser trends in the future. If they don’t, they will definitely lose more of whatever probably small amount of remaining normies who don’t use edge or chrome but instead opt for Firefox. They’re not tech literate enough to see a conveniently placed ad telling them that xyz browser now uses AI security features and Firefox doesn’t and discern the fact that it’s a ploy to get them to switch. We need more normies if we really want a chance to keep Firefox more than just treadingn water, and the best way is to offer more random bullshit of the week to keep them from switching to a competitor.

shotgun_crab ,

It already has AI-powered translations though? Time to switch to librewolf anyway

KonalaKoala ,
@KonalaKoala@lemmy.world avatar

I’m happy that I’m already using LibreWolf.

Redex68 ,

Honestly, the worst part of the AI craze is that so many people hear AI now and immediately hate it even though it can really do some amazing stuff, e.g. in medicine. AI as a blanket term just has so much variance, there’s a ton of trash and a ton of great stuff.

firepenny ,

Part of the problem is that all ads anymore want push their version of “AI” in your face and some of these “AI” are nothing new just rebranded.

yukijoou ,

“AI” today mostly refers to LLMs, and whichever LLM you’re using, you’ll likely face the same issues (wrong answers creeping in, tending towards mediocrity in its answers, etc.) - those seem to be things you have to live with if you want to use LLMs. if you know you can’t deal with it, another rebrand won’t help anything

mesamunefire ,

Part of my research as an undergrad was working with PLSA. It’s very much an algorithm.

Boxscape ,
@Boxscape@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

https://media1.tenor.com/m/SJcy59OvgcAAAAAC/the-office-no.gif

BigDanishGuy ,

Why Mozilla? Why? You were the chosen one… Fuck it, I’m going back to lynx! Tabs? Sure we have tabs in lynx, just run lynx in tmux

Blisterexe ,

what? Its opt-in

BigDanishGuy ,

Sorry I can’t read your reply, lynx doesn’t render it properly ;)

priapus ,

I hope they add DuckDuckGo as a provider. I use their chat with Mixtral often.

net ,
@net@lemmy.ca avatar

Mixtral is the best of all without doubts. I use as a daily driver too and thr fact that it has loose censorship (until now) give me always great awnsers.

librejoe ,

And we say goodbye to Firefox. NEXT!

wizzor ,

Did you actually read the content…?

cupcakezealot ,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

people please actually read the article not the headline; this is literally about accessibility improvements for blind and visually impaired people for generating alt text inside of documents and pdfs.

proti ,

yeah but AI bad no matter if it would be actually useful for once

librejoe ,

I don’t care. I don’t want AI in my browser.

essteeyou ,

Nice for you, fuck blind people.

kilgore_trout ,

Blind people shouldn’t need to give up their privacy to Microsoft and Google to have a web page read to them.

essteeyou ,

Let me just quote the top of this thread.

people please actually read the article not the headline; this is literally about accessibility improvements for blind and visually impaired people for generating alt text inside of documents and pdfs.

It doesn’t just read the page to them, which is a solved problem, it generates descriptions when they’re missing, making the web more accessible.

themurphy ,

Great take.

original2 ,

Ai ScArY!¡! And you haven’t ever used google translate?

librejoe ,

no. why the hell would I use google spyware crap?

kilgore_trout ,

Some people care about privacy.

bamboo ,

Many of the people complaining about a feature they would just disable and never use are also the same kinds of people who would complain about basic accessibility features and call them “unnecessary bloat”.

slackassassin ,

Fuck braille bro

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Yeah, why do you think you can put bumps on my nice, flat screen. Entitles pieces of crap… :)

orclev ,

That’s one of the things, but it’s also adding a dedicated sidebar for AI. That’s the sort of thing that should just be an extension, there’s absolutely no reason at all why that needs to be something built into the browser.

Developers should be providing alt text themselves, but in cases where they aren’t having a local image recognition model running to provide a description isn’t terrible as long as it’s either 100% local or completely opt-in.

The dedicated sidebar on the other hand feels very much like a cheap attempt to cash in on the AI fad.

barsoap ,

That’s the sort of thing that should just be an extension

It most likely is on the technical level, just shipped by default and integrated into standard settings instead of the add-on ones. And it’s going to be opt-in, so you won’t have to go into about:config to disable it. Speaking of: You’re looking for extensions.pocket.enabled, it should be false. And before you say “muh diskspace” it’s probably like 5k of js and css or such.

cheddar ,
@cheddar@programming.dev avatar

access their preferred AI service from the Firefox sidebar to summarize information, simplify language, or test their knowledge, all without leaving their current web page.

Our initial offering will include ChatGPT, Google Gemini, HuggingChat, and Le Chat Mistral

douglasg14b ,
@douglasg14b@lemmy.world avatar

Now we just need accessibility tools for the cognitively impaired that can’t seem to read the damn article.

nick ,

No fuckin’ thanks.

GnuLinuxDude ,
@GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml avatar

native tab grouping would be a much more desirable feature, to me

crusty ,

They’re differently working on it

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