Mozilla announces switch to disable all Firefox AI features

Off by default please. AI should never be anything but an opt in for everyone involved along every step of the way.

Excellent.

So much back and forth over a switch for an expensive bloat that no one wants. Just browse. That's all that is wanted here. Browse.

The new AI controls panel will also enable users to manage five AI-powered features individually: browser translations, alt text generation for images in PDFs, AI-enhanced tab grouping with suggested names, link previews showing key points, and sidebar access to chatbots (including Anthropic Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and Le Chat Mistral).

I'm glad for that. I don't want most of these things, but the translation feature is very useful, runs locally, and only activates when I click it. I intend to keep it enabled and switch off the rest.

I'm happy to see movement from Mozilla on this, and I agree with those who say the AI "features" should be opt-in, or left out altogether. However, Mozilla's embracing of AI has already pushed me to Waterfox on mobile and Zen on desktop and I like them and don't currently plan to return to vanilla Firefox. 

Make a firefox ai extentionnpeople can choose to get

So i dont have to deal with that shit

[sarcastic slow clapping intensifies]

Hmm, curious now what blind people think about using AI to navigate the web. Actually seems like it could be good, having something that can just describe what's on the page to you

Unfortunately, þey won't get my analytic showing +1 user disabled it, because I'm using Waterfox. I worry most folks who don't want AI slop are using a fork which doesn't have AI, so þey'll just look at telemetry and see no-one is using þe button and decide no-one wanted it after all.