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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@ivanvector Succinctly: Mozilla is doing a lot of *talking* about their decisions, but not a lot of listening. They're here to tell us they're doing it, and are surveying the talking points people are going to use against them. Even if that's not their plan, that's effectively what they have actually done.
@jripley It reminds me of the "negative option billing" scandal.
Way back in the mid-90s, one of the big Canadian telcos launched a new cable package with a bunch of specialty channels, and just added it to all their customers' bills. Then, after the bills had already gone out, said that the customers should have called to cancel if they didn't want the extra service.
It took a few years after that but there are now laws both federally and in several provinces specifically outlawing that practice.
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@alextecplayz here's the help page, so you can judge for yourself https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-ai-controls. We mostly refrain from using the term "opt-in" because people have different definitions of opt-in.
Models don't download until you engage with the feature, but some folks have said it's only opt-in if even the entry points are in a separate binary.
I asked for UI that shows downloaded models, but there wasn't time for that in 148. I'll keep asking for it
@firefoxwebdevs
"We mostly refrain from using "opt-in" because people have different definitions of opt-in"What bullshit is this?
Opt-in means it is disabled until I explicitly enable it. -
@firefoxwebdevs
"We mostly refrain from using "opt-in" because people have different definitions of opt-in"What bullshit is this?
Opt-in means it is disabled until I explicitly enable it.@ninafelwitch and it is. Models don't download until you engage with the feature.
However, some folks have said this doesn't count as opt-in, as the entry points are still visible.
AI Controls let you also disable these entry points.
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@ninafelwitch and it is. Models don't download until you engage with the feature.
However, some folks have said this doesn't count as opt-in, as the entry points are still visible.
AI Controls let you also disable these entry points.
@firefoxwebdevs if it is disabled by default and only activates after explicitly clicking a button, then it is technically opt-in.
Can I dismiss this message with "cancel" forever or does it show up every time I want to create a new tab group? -
@firefoxwebdevs if it is disabled by default and only activates after explicitly clicking a button, then it is technically opt-in.
Can I dismiss this message with "cancel" forever or does it show up every time I want to create a new tab group?@firefoxwebdevs maybe change the buttons to "dismiss" to dismiss this message forever and "activate" to activate the feature. That way there won't be any more confusion and the opt-in nature of this feature is more apparent.
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@firefoxwebdevs if it is disabled by default and only activates after explicitly clicking a button, then it is technically opt-in.
Can I dismiss this message with "cancel" forever or does it show up every time I want to create a new tab group?@ninafelwitch the first screenshot is when you create a tab group, the second is if you click "suggest more of my tabs".
If you click cancel in the second screenshot, you go back to the first screen.
Next time you create a tab group, you get the first screen.
Although the "settings" link takes you to where you can disable this entry point, and all AI entry points, including ones for future AI features.
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@ninafelwitch the first screenshot is when you create a tab group, the second is if you click "suggest more of my tabs".
If you click cancel in the second screenshot, you go back to the first screen.
Next time you create a tab group, you get the first screen.
Although the "settings" link takes you to where you can disable this entry point, and all AI entry points, including ones for future AI features.
@ninafelwitch actually, the "settings" link just takes you to general settings. There used to be an option there to disable the "suggest more of my tabs" button, but it's moved to the new "AI controls" settings.
It should link to "AI controls". I've suggested this internally, and folks agree.
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@ninafelwitch the first screenshot is when you create a tab group, the second is if you click "suggest more of my tabs".
If you click cancel in the second screenshot, you go back to the first screen.
Next time you create a tab group, you get the first screen.
Although the "settings" link takes you to where you can disable this entry point, and all AI entry points, including ones for future AI features.
@firefoxwebdevs yeah, so the feature of some LLM reading your tabs and suggesting tab names is opt-in. You have to explicitly agree to use it. It doesn't happen automatically. It is opt-in.
What's not opt-in is this AI nonsense in general. And that's what people are complaining about.
I can't see any benefit of having an AI in your browser at all.
Nobody wants it, nobody needs it. We don't want a "generate tab names with AI" button in our browser. -
@ninafelwitch actually, the "settings" link just takes you to general settings. There used to be an option there to disable the "suggest more of my tabs" button, but it's moved to the new "AI controls" settings.
It should link to "AI controls". I've suggested this internally, and folks agree.
@firefoxwebdevs all AI features should be disabled by default. There shouldn't be a need for an "AI killswitch".
No, AI features shouldn't even be in the browser to begin with. Make them plugins. Problem solved.
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@firefoxwebdevs yeah, so the feature of some LLM reading your tabs and suggesting tab names is opt-in. You have to explicitly agree to use it. It doesn't happen automatically. It is opt-in.
What's not opt-in is this AI nonsense in general. And that's what people are complaining about.
I can't see any benefit of having an AI in your browser at all.
Nobody wants it, nobody needs it. We don't want a "generate tab names with AI" button in our browser.@ninafelwitch I think that's where the confusion comes from, yeah. The use & download of AI is opt-in, but the offer of using & downloading it isn't. This is why I've avoided using the term "opt-in" unprompted, because folks can have a different, but also reasonable definition.
Whereas the "kill switch" is simpler. Enable it, and the entry points are gone. Including for future AI features.
What is and isn't an AI feature is another grey area (e.g. translation), but I hope we got that right.
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@ninafelwitch I think that's where the confusion comes from, yeah. The use & download of AI is opt-in, but the offer of using & downloading it isn't. This is why I've avoided using the term "opt-in" unprompted, because folks can have a different, but also reasonable definition.
Whereas the "kill switch" is simpler. Enable it, and the entry points are gone. Including for future AI features.
What is and isn't an AI feature is another grey area (e.g. translation), but I hope we got that right.
@firefoxwebdevs I have a suggestion. When the software updates to the new version, advertise the new AI features through a popup with two buttons. One says "activate", which will activate the AI features in general, the other button says "dismiss" and leaves the features turned off. And instead of a "kill switch" in the settings, have a "activate AI features" button that turns into a "disable AI features" button after being clicked.
That's how it should be. Why isn't it already like this?
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@firefoxwebdevs I have a suggestion. When the software updates to the new version, advertise the new AI features through a popup with two buttons. One says "activate", which will activate the AI features in general, the other button says "dismiss" and leaves the features turned off. And instead of a "kill switch" in the settings, have a "activate AI features" button that turns into a "disable AI features" button after being clicked.
That's how it should be. Why isn't it already like this?
@ninafelwitch I think there's a risk that folks would miss out of genuinely (imo) useful features like translation, because they thought "ugh AI" and clicked dismiss, but I'm guessing a little - I work on web platform features, hence the account name, and I personally have little interest in AI becoming a large part of my role here.
I only got involved in the "kill switch" because I noticed it lacked a way to "disable all & future features… except [x]", which I was able to push for.
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@duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs they're aware of the sentiment. I'm sure you're aware that Mastodon has a high representation of folks who don't like AI, so presenting evidence that Mastodon users don't like AI is kinda… well… not really useful.
@jaffathecake Please tell us, Jake. What kind of evidence do we have to present to make it useful to you and whoever actually decides what y'all work on? Or is this whole gathering of user feedback maybe not making any impact at all?
