• brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19 days

    I don’t trust any feature that uses the word “AI.”

    Ideally, such things should be transparent to the user. As in features that are useful without having to understand the underlying programming mechanisms.

    Take FF’s local translation. That’s an immensely useful feature. No one cares that it uses a language model or about any of the details, because it just works well enough, and is useful enough to stand on its own as an advantage over Chromium.

    …If they have to brand a feature to make it appealing, that’s a bad sign. Otherwise why TF would I want expensive tab sorting or things like that?

  • Willdrick@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20 days

    I don’t really mind AI features where it makes sense. That being said, as someone else commented, this should have been a plugin.

    I’ll add on top of that: this should have been a plugin wholly developed by Mistral. Mozilla should stop spending time and money on side features and focus on the browser and its engine. It still is way slower than any chromium based browser, lacks features that have been standard on chromium for years (eg. HDR video playback) and it’s way less efficient on battery than the competition.

    Complaining about Firefox doing this and groveling on “I’m good, I’m on <random fork>” is spitting upwards: even the most modified forks like Zen still rely on Mozilla’s aging engine.

    • Feyd@programming.devEnglish
      18 days

      Firefox actually picked up on good improvements at around the same they started with the AI stuff. Tab groups and vertical tabs were something people wanted forever and they implemented excellently. Firefox does have HDR.

      I don’t know if firefox is slower than chromium in benchmarks or something but it’s certainly not noticeable to me in real usage.

      By all means criticize AI features, but please don’t lie about everything else.

      • Willdrick@lemmy.worldEnglish
        18 days

        I am on the latest version of FF on Linux and I don’t have HDR working, not on YouTube, nor on standalone players like Jellyfin. Yes my display is HDR and Wayland+gnome is exposing HDR properly to games and Helium (chromium fork).

        Since some govt and utilities sites only work on “chrome” (borked even with user agent switcher set to chrome+win on FF) I had to get this other browser, and the speed difference is noticeable on most sites, even tho theoretically FF should be faster since its stripping a lot of crap with uBlock Origin.

        Tried flatpak’d Brave and also runs snappier than FF.

      • Darkenfolk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        20 days

        Or they can stop trying to force it through their users throat and just accept that the biggest part of their users don’t want it.

        • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.netEnglish
          20 days

          accept that the biggest part of their users don’t want it.

          Where did you find this data?

        • lastweakness@lemmy.worldEnglish
          20 days

          I mean, they do give a single toggle that disables every AI feature (new and old) at once… I think that’s pretty good

  • solrize@lemmy.mlEnglish
    20 days

    It doesn’t say anything about how this works. “No data retention” suggests that data is going to a server that’s processing it but then not retaining it. That’s bad, this type of feature should run entirely on the client.

    Also, there’s a proprietary AI model doing the work, even if inference is in the client. It says “open weight” but that’s like letting people download a program as a compiled binary, the exact opposite of what FOSS is supposed to mean. It’s an open/free model only if the training data and algorithms are also public, not just the trained weights.

    • CommanderCloon@lemmy.mlEnglish
      18 days

      Issue is that local AI hog vram, are slow and small models. Or if you don’t have a compatible GPU, it uses the CPU which is even slower.

      If AI is the future, I really hope it’s local, but with the equipment people have at home, local AIs are a non-starter.

      IMO it’s enough to justify not shipping those AI features at all but I guess that’s where FF execs disagree.

  • eicker@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20 days

    Mozilla choosing Mistral for Firefox Smart Window feels like a rare AI partnership that actually fits the product. Privacy, zero data retention and multilingual models are a much better match for Firefox than turning the browser into another Big Tech AI funnel.

    • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nlEnglish
      18 days

      Why do you say privacy and zero data retention? Has there been any proof of this? What we have learned from the last few years of investigations is companies lie and lie and lie through their teeth about anything regarding privacy.

      • eicker@lemmy.worldEnglish
        18 days

        Personally I trust Mozilla and Mistral a lot more than any of those big tech bros.

      • Natanael@infosec.pubEnglish
        18 days

        Mistral makes a lot of local models you can run yourself, assuming that’s what this is about. Nothing would leave your computer

        Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to integrate, but it could be worse 🤷