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.
I’ve been a user of Firefox since before it was called Firefox. I’m exploring different options now and I’m not interested in how they try to bandaid this. I know if they put in a switch it’ll eventually be taken out.
Or they could just ship it without the AI
Oh, it “wasn’t made clear” SUUURE. Addressing a blowback could be way better if you admitted a mistake instead of gaslighting your users. Not the way to earn back lost trust.
Wasn’t Mozilla Corp. supposed to be an ethical enterprise? How’s this ethical at all in any respect? How companies like these got convinced that so-called AIs are something users overwhelmingly want to use? Why, by default, users would want to fuck the atmosphere and several markets, so they can have shitty tweaked images and probably bad answers to the most simple questions?
Would be nice if folks stopped calling LLMs AI. If they are true AI, they would be able to learn how a kill switch works and disable it
So, an actual artificial brain?
Can I secretly upload mine?
EDIT: Don’t worry! It’s small enough to fit!
We already have a term for “true” AI, it’s AGI - Artifcial General Intelligence.
Both AGI and LLMs are types of artificial intelligence, as are things like OCR, speech to text systems, or chess engines, and a ton of other things, it’s a vast field of computer science.
It has to be opt-in or they can go fuck themselves
I’m already trying out LibreWolf on desktop and IronFox on mobile.
So far everything is working, probably another week of testing/using and then I’ll just uninstall Firefox.
That is nice and all I rather not have AI baked into it at all. I switched to Watefox instead.
Any Firefox forks that support HDR? I know ff doesn’t on its own but I also don’t really want to use chrome or edge. I’m open to suggestions.
Until the bad press dies down and they feel like removing it
The Microsoft way:
“Why do you disable that”
“You’re weird. Everyone uses that”
“You cannot disable that”
I think it says something that they’re backpedaling at all. This isn’t just “bad press”, its a real market for people who want products that are “AI Free”. And since Firefox is the other-other browser, its a market they’re feeling obligated to fill.
Hmm, wisdom?
Except people won’t trust them
They could save themselves all that bullshit by just not bothering with any of it!
Or they can give people to option to use or not use it.
Absolutely it should be opt in not opt out
Why put the user through the issue of turning it off instead of having it off by default and letting those who want to use it turn it on? That’s some bullshit on Mozilla’s end. Fuck them.
Jesus you guys are so fucking whiny. Takes two seconds.
It’s not about the effort, it’s about the default. The US considered breaking Microsoft up over this. “You can always uninstall it” isn’t the point
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.
That’s not an educated opinion. 90% of users don’t read shit, they just use things, badly. If you don’t care about those doofus’s protection and you think “It’s their own fault”, you’re accidentally being a bit of a douche canoe.
If a person doesn’t have any issues, then is it actually a problem they need to read up on and disable? Why is there any fault to be had at all in that case? Assuming everyone’s use case is the same is also not an educated opinion.
If individuals start having problems, the tools to fix them are there and it’s on the individual to use them. If large swaths of the user base start having problems, that’s Mozilla’s issue to fix. Right now, any prediction of which way this goes is just a guess.
I am whiny as fuck, which is why I fucking dropped everything by Mozilla from my life. Those are 2 seconds I can add to my porn addiction streamline.
This is a response to all the backlash. Oops, we"forgot" to mention you can completely turn this all off… (Quick, vibe code a kill switch guys!)
It’s always been disableable… y’all just need them to spell it out for you.
This made me switch to waterfox
I switched to LibreWolf when the privacy policy fiasco happened a while ago. It’s funny how every few weeks Mozilla manages to demonstrate why I won’t switch back.
The new CEO has also already lost me with this gem:
He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
Even taking the statement at face value, it’s unacceptable for it to just “feel off-mission”. It should be a clear “no, never” instead of some wishy-washy answer.
But reading between the lines, such a statement is not just an off-the-cuff remark, but at best a threat to their users, and at worst a way to gauge the blowback of such a decision. They must have already taken it seriously enough to come up with the $150 million.
If I had to put up a number, I’d guess there’s a 25+% chance that Firefox will drop Manifest V2 in the next few years.
I did for my phone but can’t get Teams to share screen on my desktop (Linux desktop) while Chromium can… once I have that one figured out, I will switch to Waterfox on the desktop as well
That’s cool while it lasts. I don’t have a ton of faith in a project that’s just one guy’s personal crusade to create a non-shit browser, though.
“Cool while it lasts” is still better than “terrible now and forever”. Hopefully Waterfox survives long enough for Ladybird to get off the ground.
Well they’re clearly not taking it all that seriously as it should be an Opt-IN feature, not an Opt-Out. They’re banking on a majority non tech savvy userbase to not even bother disabling it. fine, whatever, that’s on the user.
But it’s just more Firefox bloat that I have zero desire to deal with. If I wanted bloat in my browser I’d go use Vivaldi.
Firefox updates
New Features Popup
“NEW: AI enchanced features!”
“Enable?”Its not rocket science. Enable the AI crap to pay the heads of your stockholders andale it Opt-IN to keep users happy.
