AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
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@ArneBab "block" was picked deliberately, as it's removing all entry points to the feature, not just disabling the feature (e.g. disabled buttons are still there, but these are BLOCKED).
It was important to show the features individually so you can control them individually. E.g. translation is something people explicitly wanted to be able to re-enable https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115849251057488746
@firefoxwebdevs @ArneBab
No, you've lost the plot! -
AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs
And WHY were these "True" by default?
Why once even re-enabled?Mozilla isn't trustworthy.
The so-called ML is an invasion of privacy and a waste of computing resource.
Go back to a Classic Firefox that's ONLY a browser and repects OS GUI look & feel instead of copying Google.
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AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs "AI is changing the web, and people want very different things from it. We’ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI. We’ve also heard from others who want AI tools that are genuinely useful."
Have you? Because I've literally only heard the former. See e.g. virtually every one of the 966 comments on https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/building-ai-the-firefox-way-shaping-what-s-next-together/td-p/109922
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@firefoxwebdevs
And WHY were these "True" by default?
Why once even re-enabled?Mozilla isn't trustworthy.
The so-called ML is an invasion of privacy and a waste of computing resource.
Go back to a Classic Firefox that's ONLY a browser and repects OS GUI look & feel instead of copying Google.
@raymaccarthy about:config isn't intended to be for user settings. That's why we've created a dedicated AI controls page, and we're the first to do so.
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AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
credit where credit is due
I'm still going to use Librewolf as trust on telemetry and ad-partnerships is not yet restored
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I know you'll likely get a whole bunch of negative feedback on Fedi for not going even further, but at least this appears to *clearly and unambiguously* put the user in control in a way that does not require digging through about:config settings and worrying about what an upgrade will do. So I am cautiously optimistic about this.
Can you say anything about when those of us who are on the ESR update track can expect to see this? Will there be a policy setting to control this?
@mkj I don't know the answer to this off the top of my head, but I'll find out and get back to you.
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AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs This is FANTASTIC! Thank you guys for listening to feedback!
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@raymaccarthy about:config isn't intended to be for user settings. That's why we've created a dedicated AI controls page, and we're the first to do so.
@firefoxwebdevs
You are missing the point!The features should not exist! So then no need for a master switch in the main settings.
Firefox has got so broken it needs loads of settings changed in About.config and even then is LESS USEABLE than 10 or 15 years ago.
I've been using Websites since 1994. Mosaic, Netscape, Firefox.
Of course I've used most of the others.
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@ArneBab it doesn't just disable all existing feature, it also auto-disables future AI features, or 'blocks' them from even appearing in the UI.
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AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs Too little. Too late.
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@firefoxwebdevs "AI is changing the web, and people want very different things from it. We’ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI. We’ve also heard from others who want AI tools that are genuinely useful."
Have you? Because I've literally only heard the former. See e.g. virtually every one of the 966 comments on https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/building-ai-the-firefox-way-shaping-what-s-next-together/td-p/109922
@mike @firefoxwebdevs "AI is changing the web" is also certainly one way of describing the unending tide of SEO-optimized slop coating every surface that's made using the web as a source of information and knowledge virtually impossible.
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@mike @firefoxwebdevs "AI is changing the web" is also certainly one way of describing the unending tide of SEO-optimized slop coating every surface that's made using the web as a source of information and knowledge virtually impossible.
@alahmnat @firefoxwebdevs Precisely.
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AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs That's awesome, but honestly that feature should have landed months ago. It's sad that it took so long to deliver such a 'simple' feature — it eroded trust needlessly
I understand it's hard to ship stuff, but we are talking about a toggle in preferences, so it was really frustrating not to see this shipped earlier.
Also, is that 'scare screen' really necessary? It's the same kind of trick we're always complaining about with FAANG products…
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I know you'll likely get a whole bunch of negative feedback on Fedi for not going even further, but at least this appears to *clearly and unambiguously* put the user in control in a way that does not require digging through about:config settings and worrying about what an upgrade will do. So I am cautiously optimistic about this.
Can you say anything about when those of us who are on the ESR update track can expect to see this? Will there be a policy setting to control this?
@mkj @firefoxwebdevs policy example:
{
"policies": {
"DisableFirefoxStudies": true,
"DisableTelemetry": true,
"DontCheckDefaultBrowser": true,
"FirefoxHome": {
"SponsoredStories": false,
"SponsoredTopSites": false,
"Stories": false
},
"GenerativeAI": {
"Enabled": false
},
"SearchEngines": {
"Remove": [
"Perplexity"
]
}
}
} -
AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs love it! Its a refreshing alternative to Edge's "shove Copilot down users thought at every opportunity" switch, which I think has only one setting
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AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs that being said, I actually love having local translation built into thr browser. It seems like the perfect use case for small language models that can be run on most laptops / desktop pcs today. Don't see a need to have the default setting to be off for that
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@firefoxwebdevs
You are missing the point!The features should not exist! So then no need for a master switch in the main settings.
Firefox has got so broken it needs loads of settings changed in About.config and even then is LESS USEABLE than 10 or 15 years ago.
I've been using Websites since 1994. Mosaic, Netscape, Firefox.
Of course I've used most of the others.
@raymaccarthy @firefoxwebdevs You have never needed to use about:config. You can still quite happily browse the web using Firefox without going into about:config.
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AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs what's about mozconfig.cfg build option?
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some people really like those other features though. Translation is one of our most requested features ever, and we couldn't implement prior to local AI. We weren't going to ship your web pages to some web service so they could see what you browse. But to other folks "AI is AI" and they want it off.
Feedback in Nightly is how we figure out if there are too many options or not enough.
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AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs the tiny minority of people who choose to use firefox at all dont want AI. it should be off by default if its being shoehorned in anyway, but since mozilla doesnt care the least they could do is not neuter the name.
"kill switch" bites, "AI controls" licks
EDIT: misread formally as formerly, still dont like this
