Tldr: Theyre adding an opt-in alt text generation for blind people and an opt-in ai chat sidebar where you can choose the model used (includes self-hosted ones)
I like how it is opt-in.
Self-hosted and locally run models also goes a long way. 90% of LLMs applications don’t require users to surrender their devices, data, privacy and security to big corporations. But that is exactly how the space is being run right now.
And yet, Mozilla went for the 10% that do violate your privacy and gives your data to the biggest corporations: Google, Microsoft, OpenAI.
What happened to the Mozilla Manifesto?
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If it was truly opt-in, it could be an extension. They should not be bundling this with the browser, bloating it more in the process.
AI already has ethical issues, and environmental issues, and privacy issues, and centralization issues. You technically can run your own local AI, but they hook up to the big data-hungry ones out of the box.
Look at the Firefox subreddit. One month ago, people were criticizing the thought of adding AI to Firefox. Two months ago, same thing. Look at the Firefox community. See how many times people requested AI.
If it was truly opt-in, it could be an extension. They should not be bundling this with the browser, bloating it more in the process.
The extension API doesn’t have enough access for this.
You technically can run your own local AI, but they hook up to the big data-hungry ones out of the box.
While it is opt-in and disabled by default, this is the real problem.
What are they missing? So far, all they’ve added is a sidebar and a couple extra right-click menu additions. Both of these are available for all extensions.
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Look at the Firefox subreddit. One month ago, people were criticizing the thought of adding AI to Firefox. Two months ago, same thing. Look at the Firefox community. See how many times people requested AI.
I believe what most people are concerned about, including myself, was the AI features being enabled automatically and then having to disable it like every other application would do to inflate metrics.
Because this is opt in like it says in the blog I am ok with it there and disabled.
Will you need your own account for the proprietary ones? Mozilla paying for these feels like it couldn’t be sustainable long term, which is worrying.
The proprietary ones are free
But what does it DO? How is it actually useful? An accessibility PDF reader is nice, but AI can do more than that
Our initial offering will include ChatGPT, Google Gemini, HuggingChat, and Le Chat Mistral
This is great, but again, what for?
A lot of people use llms a lot, ao its useful for them, but its also nice for summarizing long articles you dont have the time to read, not as good as reading it, but better than skimming jt
Theyre adding an opt-in alt text generation for blind people
No, that’s not useful at all, but Mozilla refused to listen to the blind community.
Can you elaborate? I would love to learn more about the alternative suggestions
Because good alt text needs to be highly context dependant, so you can’t automate it. The better alternatives we have right now are crowd-sourced alt text sites, where volunteers may generate descriptions.
I think you have a very optimistic view on how far crowd sourcing this is going to take us.
BTW, you think web developers aren’t already using editors that use AI to generate alt text automatically? AI alt text is going to be everywhere regardless.
Also I’m not saying that’s a good thing. It’s just an inevitable thing.
Also I’m not saying that’s a good thing. It’s just an inevitable thing.
Then why respond when I was mentioning its usefulness and that the blind community was not heard by the tech bros.
Why not?
