Not everyone is happy with the introduction of AI into... well, everything they use on a daily basis, and it appears Mozilla has been listening. After considerable backlash towards its announcement that Firefox would become an 'AI browser' over the next few years, it looks to have changed its tune in recent weeks.
Beyond the declaration that it's building a 'rebel alliance' to challenge Big Tech's current plans for AI-integrated toasters and the like, it's now announced a new AI controls section within the browser's settings menu.
"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. Listening to our community, alongside our ongoing commitment to offer choice, led us to build AI controls."
The new menu allows you to turn on or off a host of AI features, including translations, alt text in PDFs, AI-enhanced tab grouping, link previews, and an AI chatbot in the sidebar.
"You can choose to use some of these and not others. If you don’t want to use AI features from Firefox at all, you can turn on the Block AI enhancements toggle," says Mozilla. "When it’s toggled on, you won’t see pop-ups or reminders to use existing or upcoming AI features".
Your AI preferences also stay in place across updates, apparently, which should hopefully prevent a random AI feature from bouncing its "We've added a doohickie!" message across your browser window because you dared to keep your software up to date. Hopefully. We can only pray.
As a Firefox user myself, I have to say this is pretty encouraging. Some of these features were already capable of being disabled within one of the browser's labyrinthine settings pages (or in the about:config panel), but grouping all the stuff I want to turn off in one easy menu seems like a genuine improvement.
If you want to try it out early, Mozilla says the controls will also be available in the Firefox Nightly beta builds, although I tried one once and it broke many things. Your mileage may vary, but at least your anti-AI browser crusade might come one step closer to fruition.
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