Mozilla under fire for Firefox AI "bloat" that blows up CPU and drains battery
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There is none, this is all AI=bad knee-jerk reaction. From what I can tell, so far Firefox has 3 ML-based systems implemented:
- Site / text translation - fully local, small model, requires manual action from user
- Tab grouping suggestions - fully local, small model, requires manual action from user
- Image alt text generation (when adding images to a PDF) - fully local, small model, looks like it's enabled by default but can be turned off directly in the modal that appears when adding alt text
All of these models are small enough to be quickly run locally on mobile devices with minimal wait time. The CPU spikes appear to be a bug in the inference module implementation - not an intended behavior.
Firefox also provides UI for connecting to cloud-based chatbots on a sidebar, but they need to be manually enabled to be used. The sidebar is also customizable so anyone who doesn't want this button there can just remove it. There's also a setting in about:config that removes it harder.
I actually really like the way Mozilla is introducing these features. I recently had to visit another country's post office site and having the ability to just instantly translate it directly on my device is great.
You meant to tell me the general public has kneejerk reactions and don't know how a computer works?
What a shock that lemmy bashes Mozilla for doing their job.
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You can literally do it through the menu. Go to settings, hit labs or search "ai" and untick it
no AI
/edit: There's a setting under General -> Tabs for the tab group naming suggestions.
The article only talked about
about:config
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Because they keep betraying their supposed values for short-term gains.
What is the gain? What is a single gain you think they have milked from their users?
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Correction: power users, such as the type on Lemmy, trend towards hating ai. That is by no means “all users” by any stretch of the term.
Why do you enter a guesstimate as a explanation for why if you have no idea, do you think that if you say it enough it will be like that?
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What is the gain? What is a single gain you think they have milked from their users?
Money for their executives
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Money for their executives
But nobody pays for Firefox? Do you mean the "recommended pages"? Because yeah that is a revenue source I guess, but as long as I can turn it off I can let it slide
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But nobody pays for Firefox? Do you mean the "recommended pages"? Because yeah that is a revenue source I guess, but as long as I can turn it off I can let it slide
They get money from Google, advertisements, and selling data. Did you think Mozilla made it without paying their employees and executives?
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They get money from Google, advertisements, and selling data. Did you think Mozilla made it without paying their employees and executives?
No, why would you think that? Of course they do
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No, why would you think that? Of course they do
What is the gain? What is a single gain you think they have milked from their users?
But nobody pays for Firefox? Do you mean the "recommended pages"?
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What is the gain? What is a single gain you think they have milked from their users?
But nobody pays for Firefox? Do you mean the "recommended pages"?
They got no gains from that only lost users