To be fair, I could paint this one quickly because I only painted the fox and the parrot over a scene that I had already painted for Reddit when they had their API change controversy back in June 2023. The artwork is hosted somewhere in this directory: https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/artworks/misc.html
Quick question for you. I use Firefox Developer Version extensively for web design projects. Is the same AI slop going to be integrated into that, too?
@TheEffekt Dev Edition is, at the moment, just Firefox Nightly (although it may recive dev-focused updates earlier when those are available). @firefoxwebdevs has a Q&A style thread started with clarifying how there is going to be a βkill switchβ β not just for Dev Edition, but for Firefox in general.
@coldfish Unfortunately, Brave's worse than Mozilla. (The CEO's a homophobe, the company's heavily into cryptoscams, and it just gets worse from there.)
@coldfish If you're gonna use anything Chromium-based, stick to something barebones, like ungoogled.
Given that Brave's queerphobic CEO was actually the co-founder of Mozilla (EDIT: noticed somebody in the replies already pointed that out in some way or form), you could argue he's basically everything that's wrong with current day Mozilla but multiplied by two.
@kptn_offensichtlich@ocramius they could spin off a Mozilla Research Lab if they've got this much AI scamcoin to burn, let the browser be a browser, make extensions for everything else.
@ocramius id have hope if this existed from the beginning of their big AI push. the fact that things have already gotten this bad makes me very hesitant to trust Firefox going forward
@ocramius Hope is one thing, but we're not worried about whether they *will* do the wrong thing in the future. They've already done it. We've been watching them do the wrong thing in real time ever since they put AI "help" in MDN, and since then they've done nothing but lean further into AI hype and dismiss any criticism.
This is what happens when your "nonprofit" gets all its money from its for-profit subsidiary. Investors love AI. Doesn't matter that they're the only ones.
A couple of years before, Google was saying things like "Don't be Evil" while promoting a good internet for the users. Today Google is one of the biggest evil tech empire of the world.
I understand the idea of believing in something based on the experience, but everything can change and it's not bad to be aware of some things like the decisions Mozilla is doing these days.
@isukun Luckily, Firefox is Foss, and if Mozilla screws up, other organizations may make a fork and do better (with less profit). EU could surely fund it.
I'm really not happy with the situation either... :( Maybe a workaround would be looking at the code and find every single url/ip that FF is supposed to call and block them in a firewall... but that's both not very casual user friendly and time consuming because if it's efficient they would just have to regularly change subdomains or whatever to make things hard.
@Kampfdiestel@Gynux there is (maybe) some hope with that https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115740500373677782 (and this kill switch will maybe make the job to remove it easier) but the worst thing is that (a good part of) the remaining FF devs will spend a lot of time on these features instead of improving more important things...
@pmiossec That's not true Philippe. We're hiring to work on these things, this means this doesn't change what the other engineers are working on. You could say that this money could be used elsewhere, sure, but still I hope this reduces your concern. @Kampfdiestel@Gynux
@julienw Seeing how the AI crap already in Firefox is enabled by default and has to be disabled in about:config, no, it does not reduce my concern. Start with opt-in for the already integrated AI crap and an easy way to disable it.
@CyberPunker No cloud-based AI is enabled by default as far as I understood. Yes there are menu options but until they're configured nothing happens. And even when configured that's not working automatically but following a specific user action.
A global switch is in the making too, the plan is to ship it in February.
@julienw@CyberPunker@pmiossec@Kampfdiestel Hello ! I don't know if it can be done that easily, and I seriously doubt that it would be anyway, but what about implementing some kind of temporary welcome screen/popup in the next version with a poll about adding AI feature in FF ? That way you would have a clear view about what your user base thinks. If 75% or more is against it, then maybe avoiding such a waste of resources would be a good idea ?
There are people at Mozilla doing user research, I think they're doing a great job. I don't know if they planned such a survey. I believe there's such a thing inside Firefox, that can ask questions to a subset of the users, but I'm not so sure.
I actually like how Firefox has handled AI - small local models, no spying to train AI on my data. For users who insist on using a mainstream online chatbot, it lets them do it without forcing it on others. (And there are more such users than I thought. People who I thought are way too computer illiterate to use AI surprised me by using ChatGPT.)
Firefox lets me translate text locally without big tech spying on my translations. Is this bad because it happens to use neural networks?
@elgregor Firefox offline translation is great. But it is absolutely not what they are marketing as "AI". At no point in time they advertised this as AI. So yeah, it's great, and it's not what they mean by adding AI. They have been advertising "ethical AI" since almost 10 years, and there zero thing to show except 35 millions spent on proprietary AI startups.
@bohwaz Many people (correctly) refer to this kind of features as "AI" and so do various news outlets. I have seen multiple people upset at local models and asking how to delete them. I have seen people advertise Firefox derivatives that remove the local models with the lack of those models described as a feature. I believe this mostly stems from misinformation and this is why I will keep explaining that "AI" is a very broad term that includes good things as well as bad things.
I'm not sure so far. ML has valid applications, and so far what Mozilla has brought to the table seems very reasonable to me. Most important thing for me is that everything is local and privacy friendly. And the features they have are very reasonable: An alt-text generation model makes a lot of sense for people to whom alt-texts matter. And local translation of websites also sounds like a really nice feature. As far as I see such features will make the web more accessible with better privacy.
For me the most important things are:
1. ML should be local and not send arbitrary data to shady third party services 2. ML should be build to only affect performance when you actually need it 3. ML should provide specific tools, not general purpose blackboxes
Also 4. ML should be trained in a responisble way, which means: 1. Responsible source of training data 2. Resource use of training should be justified by the benefit of the functionality
I remember the time when ML was mosty an exciting University thing, where results were shared, and not some big corporation BS. I am not against going back in that direction.
But you know, digiKam has been using public models for facial recognition and matching for years now. And I don't think anything bad came from it.
I am currently in the position of saying: Wait and see what mozilla does. And if it turns out the wrong way, there are forks. That's the beauty of open source.
@lazy Plenty of good ML research going on at Unis. LLMs and Stable Diffusion are just a microscopic slice of ML and there is a lot of cool stuff you can do with the part that do not require you to steal all intellectual property in the world.
@j_bertolotti@lazy I totally agree, and although I often take shortcuts for the sake of efficient communication, my position on LLMs is nuanced.
What worries me the most is that 'AI browsers' have a larger scope by definition. If Firefox wants to join that group, it would also mean getting a built-in assistant that can browse the web automatically, fill in forms and purchase items on the user's behalf.
I know users will be able to turn it off, but I see it as a source of security breach.
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1999 - 
2543
109 comments
adra@fedivers.al
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org lmao you draw fast
βalso perfectly accurate β:neocat_googly_shocked:β
davidrevoy
@adra Thank you! π
To be fair, I could paint this one quickly because I only painted the fox and the parrot over a scene that I had already painted for Reddit when they had their API change controversy back in June 2023. The artwork is hosted somewhere in this directory: https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/artworks/misc.html
12 βfutureisfoss@fosstodon.org
@adra
I think I found it - https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/viewer/misc__2023-06-12_Shhhrrrr-Shrrr-Shrrrr_by-David-Revoy.html
TheEffekt@indieweb.social
Quick question for you. I use Firefox Developer Version extensively for web design projects. Is the same AI slop going to be integrated into that, too?
Mensh123@social.tchncs.de
@TheEffekt Dev Edition is, at the moment, just Firefox Nightly (although it may recive dev-focused updates earlier when those are available). @firefoxwebdevs has a Q&A style thread started with clarifying how there is going to be a βkill switchβ β not just for Dev Edition, but for Firefox in general.
2 βPupWrafie@bark.lgbt
@Mensh123
*beta
@TheEffekt @firefoxwebdevs
Linux@mivatter.com
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org
1 mainstream web browser has said, NO AI.
Vivaldi web browser. πΌοΈ 15c189dd88934010.webp
sub@mastodon.uno
@Linux
chromium
non open source
the ai its not a problem it can be useful the problem is the use of it...
jherazob@mastodon.ie
@Linux
Also each of the 3 major Firefox forks/mods
GODofSub@mastodon.social
@jherazob @Linux hiii here
salva_pl@mas.to
@Linux Vivaldi is Chrome in disguise. Meanwhile, @Waterfox says NO to AI and it's not a Chrome based browser.
ToonLink@fandom.ink
HAHAHAHA OH NO
βdvshkn@treehouse.systems
kinda loving robo-parrot even though it doesn't have the best intentions
kitami@pouet.chapril.org
Tellement triste π’.
Neotheta@finfur.net
yep u_u
βskydotbit@sharkey.skydevs.me
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org noo the fops β:neofox_cry:β
light@noc.social
@skydotbit
Just realised that "fops" means "fox"
coldfish@sfba.social
I changed to Brave and it's very nice..... but the default search engine still has some AI stuff, but DuckDuckGo is still there.
wizzwizz4@fosstodon.org
@coldfish Unfortunately, Brave's worse than Mozilla. (The CEO's a homophobe, the company's heavily into cryptoscams, and it just gets worse from there.)
coldfish@sfba.social
@wizzwizz4 really??? Dammit. I was enjoying this thing
phoffer@ruby.social
@coldfish @wizzwizz4 try @zenbrowser based on Firefox with a policy of removing any AI functionality that is added
CosmicHorror@fosstodon.org
@wizzwizz4 @coldfish ironically he was also the CEO of Mozilla... for like a month
emma@mathstodon.xyz
@CosmicHorror @wizzwizz4 @coldfish "Too bad a CEO for Mozilla" is a hell of a burn.
chrisphan@hachyderm.io
@CosmicHorror @wizzwizz4 @coldfish 11 days. He had donated money to the campaign for Prop 8, a 2008 California referendum to ban same-sex marriage https://www.kqed.org/news/131545/mozilla-ceo-resigns-over-donation-to-prop-8-campaign
PuppyFromLosAndes@kolektiva.social
@coldfish
If you're gonna use anything Chromium-based, stick to something barebones, like ungoogled.
Given that Brave's queerphobic CEO was actually the co-founder of Mozilla (EDIT: noticed somebody in the replies already pointed that out in some way or form), you could argue he's basically everything that's wrong with current day Mozilla but multiplied by two.
zekounet@pouet.chapril.org
@coldfish
https://mastodon.social/@utf_7/115742616343666373
a_blahaj@blahaj.zone
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org the firefox is extinguishing itself :(
ocramius@mastodon.social
posting this here, just because there's still hope: https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115740501470592801
kptn_offensichtlich@castlewood-datahaven.de
What i would really, really wish from Mozilla is: Make a thing that does one thing and do it right, in this case: Being a browser.
Yes, i know you can disable the AI crap or any other nuisances, but it would be really nice if they would focus on their main product.
CC: @davidrevoy@framapiaf.org
patterfloof@meow.social
@kptn_offensichtlich @ocramius they could spin off a Mozilla Research Lab if they've got this much AI scamcoin to burn, let the browser be a browser, make extensions for everything else.
ocramius@mastodon.social
@patterfloof @kptn_offensichtlich agreed: FF users know when to use extensions π
patterfloof@meow.social
@kptn_offensichtlich @ocramius and there"s a default home screen they can put links on for "recommended" extensions
CosmicHorror@fosstodon.org
@ocramius id have hope if this existed from the beginning of their big AI push. the fact that things have already gotten this bad makes me very hesitant to trust Firefox going forward
emma@mathstodon.xyz
@ocramius I would like to point out that this account has no verified links to the Mozilla org.
2 βLinebyline@mastoart.social
@ocramius Hope is one thing, but we're not worried about whether they *will* do the wrong thing in the future. They've already done it. We've been watching them do the wrong thing in real time ever since they put AI "help" in MDN, and since then they've done nothing but lean further into AI hype and dismiss any criticism.
This is what happens when your "nonprofit" gets all its money from its for-profit subsidiary. Investors love AI. Doesn't matter that they're the only ones.
βjsstaedtler@mastodon.art
Oh this is very good
π 71d008a6b7e93991.mp4OndrejZizka@mastodon.social
I do not trust this hysteria about it. Mozilla has been making the right choices for the past 20+ years; I believe it will continue to be so.
βJohns_priv@mastodon.social
@OndrejZizka You mean like when they changed their TOS so they could do whatever they want with your data? (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-promise-to-never-sell-personal-data-asks-users-not-to-panic/)
That was when I abandoned them for Waterfox and never looked back.
OGjester@stranger.social
@Johns_priv This is Google deciding that maybe their slogan shouldnβt be βdonβt be evilβ in 2018 all over again. @OndrejZizka
isukun@tkz.one
@OndrejZizka
A couple of years before, Google was saying things like "Don't be Evil" while promoting a good internet for the users. Today Google is one of the biggest evil tech empire of the world.
I understand the idea of believing in something based on the experience, but everything can change and it's not bad to be aware of some things like the decisions Mozilla is doing these days.
OndrejZizka@mastodon.social
@isukun Luckily, Firefox is Foss, and if Mozilla screws up, other organizations may make a fork and do better (with less profit). EU could surely fund it.
feld@friedcheese.us
but you gotta admit that bird looks cooler than the fox, maybe they should bring back the Phoenix browser branding while they're at it
gfadrelle@mamot.fr
@feld sunbird ? but it was only the calendar ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Sunbird
feld@friedcheese.us
@gfadrelle no, before it was called Firefox it was called Phoenix πΌοΈ 6837b7f4b66dd16b.webp
RoBu@shitposter.world
@feld @gfadrelle nostalgic
Wildebeest@mastodon.social
HΓ©las...
:/
villon@bildung.social
No.
DessiniFab@piaille.fr
qu'est ce qu'il se passe ?
roipoussiere@mastodon.tetaneutral.net
@DessiniFab
Le nouveau pdg de Mozilla a annoncΓ© sa feuille de route pour l'entreprise qui est de se focaliser sur l'ia.
https://www.numerama.com/tech/2144339-pourquoi-ruiner-lun-des-derniers-bons-navigateurs-les-internautes-senervent-contre-larrivee-de-lia-dans-firefox.html
yon@sakurajima.moe
I lament that the fox you created is cute, gives it a juxtaposition.
But maybe itβs actually brilliant? After all, we want to save the fox, from itself.
Either way, Iβm never paying for browser AI, and if that means ads/privacy invasions Iβm out. Such a sad state of affairs. :(
iwein@mas.to
at first I thought that was Thunderbird who cut herself loose and was flying away. One can dream...
hodihu@social.tchncs.de
https://social.vivaldi.net/@Vivaldi/115728747391375438 #vivaldi
Brentguernsey@infosec.exchange
AI slop is why I dumped firefox for DuckDuckGo.
utf_7@mastodon.social
@Brentguernsey pro tip
noai.duckduckgo.com/
csgraves@turtleisland.social
@Brentguernsey How is their browser for video? And is there any indication of a Linux version?
Gynux@the.goofs.space
I'm really not happy with the situation either... :(
2 βMaybe a workaround would be looking at the code and find every single url/ip that FF is supposed to call and block them in a firewall... but that's both not very casual user friendly and time consuming because if it's efficient they would just have to regularly change subdomains or whatever to make things hard.
Kampfdiestel@mastodon.social
@Gynux
does disabling via about:config no longer work?
pmiossec@piaille.fr
@Kampfdiestel @Gynux there is (maybe) some hope with that https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115740500373677782 (and this kill switch will maybe make the job to remove it easier) but the worst thing is that (a good part of) the remaining FF devs will spend a lot of time on these features instead of improving more important things...
julienw@pouet.chapril.org
@pmiossec
That's not true Philippe. We're hiring to work on these things, this means this doesn't change what the other engineers are working on. You could say that this money could be used elsewhere, sure, but still I hope this reduces your concern.
@Kampfdiestel @Gynux
CyberPunker@mastodon.social
@julienw
Seeing how the AI crap already in Firefox is enabled by default and has to be disabled in about:config, no, it does not reduce my concern.
Start with opt-in for the already integrated AI crap and an easy way to disable it.
@pmiossec @Kampfdiestel @Gynux
julienw@pouet.chapril.org
@CyberPunker
No cloud-based AI is enabled by default as far as I understood. Yes there are menu options but until they're configured nothing happens. And even when configured that's not working automatically but following a specific user action.
A global switch is in the making too, the plan is to ship it in February.
@pmiossec @Kampfdiestel @Gynux
Gynux@the.goofs.space
@julienw @CyberPunker @pmiossec @Kampfdiestel
Hello !
I don't know if it can be done that easily, and I seriously doubt that it would be anyway, but what about implementing some kind of temporary welcome screen/popup in the next version with a poll about adding AI feature in FF ? That way you would have a clear view about what your user base thinks. If 75% or more is against it, then maybe avoiding such a waste of resources would be a good idea ?
julienw@pouet.chapril.org
@Gynux
There are people at Mozilla doing user research, I think they're doing a great job. I don't know if they planned such a survey. I believe there's such a thing inside Firefox, that can ask questions to a subset of the users, but I'm not so sure.
@CyberPunker @pmiossec @Kampfdiestel
βwargreen@mastodon.tetaneutral.net
@Kampfdiestel
In FF 145.0.1, just right-click anywhere, in the menue item "AI shit" i had "disable AI"
@Gynux
RoBu@shitposter.world
@Gynux Forks will initiate and adapt
datarama@hachyderm.io
It is so god damn depressing.
jfml@mastodon.art
It would be funny it it wasnt so sad π
neilk@xoxo.zone
For a second I thought Avian Intelligence had escaped confinement
βrival@mastodon.social
@neilk If that happens it would probably become a little blue whale... π
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepSeek
ronaldb66@mastodon.social
Excellent! π
βelfi@pixie.town
Scathing but no less true
Chasing the money and leaving its userbase behind
βdannotdaniel@hellions.cloud
this is why you're my favorite :parrot_this_is_fine:
βguayabito@mastodon.cr
accurate
Heliograph@mastodon.au
so sad :blobcatcry:
βamazing_helenab@mastodon.social
itβs tragic
βOrca@nya.one
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org
"Wow nice chainsaw you have in there..." π β
tekhedd@byteheaven.net
I'm sure all Mozilla's strategy is not in any way an intentional act of self-sabotage coincident with a period of minimal regulatory oversight.
elgregor@librem.one
I actually like how Firefox has handled AI - small local models, no spying to train AI on my data. For users who insist on using a mainstream online chatbot, it lets them do it without forcing it on others. (And there are more such users than I thought. People who I thought are way too computer illiterate to use AI surprised me by using ChatGPT.)
Firefox lets me translate text locally without big tech spying on my translations. Is this bad because it happens to use neural networks?
bohwaz@mamot.fr
@elgregor Firefox offline translation is great. But it is absolutely not what they are marketing as "AI". At no point in time they advertised this as AI. So yeah, it's great, and it's not what they mean by adding AI. They have been advertising "ethical AI" since almost 10 years, and there zero thing to show except 35 millions spent on proprietary AI startups.
elgregor@librem.one
@bohwaz Many people (correctly) refer to this kind of features as "AI" and so do various news outlets. I have seen multiple people upset at local models and asking how to delete them. I have seen people advertise Firefox derivatives that remove the local models with the lack of those models described as a feature. I believe this mostly stems from misinformation and this is why I will keep explaining that "AI" is a very broad term that includes good things as well as bad things.
x41h@infosec.exchange
@elgregor @bohwaz "misinformation" exactly! Thank you! You restored my faith in the Fediverse. They aren't all like you....
dregntael@dice.camp
I already moved to LibreWolf on my desktop, but I'm still looking for an alternative for Firefox on my phone.
dregntael@dice.camp
I'm currently trying out WebLibre (https://docs.weblibre.eu/), it's nice so far.
Linebyline@mastoart.social
@dregntael I don't know if it's the best thing out there, but I've had decent luck so far with Waterfox.
janeishly@beige.party
@dregntael I'm using Ironfox on my phone, seems good.
tsturm@famichiki.jp
Perfect. Absolutely perfect. π
βsythys@chaos.social
or capitalism overall.
βcustard@librem.one
Yep. As a user since before it was Firefox, itβs totally disappointing.
And another in a long line decisions messing around with the frills while not dealing with the core product.
βguyjantic@infosec.exchange
Pretty sure they know they're alienating their core users, hoping to get a larger group of less privacy-savvy users.
βTourma@pixelfur.maw.best
Mood β
carloshr@lile.cl
very accurate.
βKevinFlynn@c.im
βBrilliant
resplendent606@climatejustice.social
I love this. One question, is the bird a mascot for something or just a robot bird?
ligaturerecords@mamot.fr
@resplendent606 the bird represents AI/LLM in all of the recent drawings ("stochastic parrots")
3 βresplendent606@climatejustice.social
@ligaturerecords
That is so clever!
βEm0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange
@jargoggles This is so accurate π
βsashin@veganism.social
This looks so beautiful for commentary on tech!
2 βKhornemail@mastodon.social
sorry how you mean ?
jforseth210@rcsocial.net
The fact that they're already sawing. Yep, that's the Mozilla I know and tolerate
βlazy@fedi.at
I'm not sure so far. ML has valid applications, and so far what Mozilla has brought to the table seems very reasonable to me. Most important thing for me is that everything is local and privacy friendly. And the features they have are very reasonable: An alt-text generation model makes a lot of sense for people to whom alt-texts matter. And local translation of websites also sounds like a really nice feature. As far as I see such features will make the web more accessible with better privacy.
For me the most important things are:
1. ML should be local and not send arbitrary data to shady third party services
2. ML should be build to only affect performance when you actually need it
3. ML should provide specific tools, not general purpose blackboxes
Also
4. ML should be trained in a responisble way, which means:
1. Responsible source of training data
2. Resource use of training should be justified by the benefit of the functionality
I remember the time when ML was mosty an exciting University thing, where results were shared, and not some big corporation BS. I am not against going back in that direction.
But you know, digiKam has been using public models for facial recognition and matching for years now. And I don't think anything bad came from it.
I am currently in the position of saying: Wait and see what mozilla does. And if it turns out the wrong way, there are forks. That's the beauty of open source.
(Original message has been truncated: read the complete original message here.) 3 βj_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz
@lazy Plenty of good ML research going on at Unis. LLMs and Stable Diffusion are just a microscopic slice of ML and there is a lot of cool stuff you can do with the part that do not require you to steal all intellectual property in the world.
β
davidrevoy
@j_bertolotti @lazy I totally agree, and although I often take shortcuts for the sake of efficient communication, my position on LLMs is nuanced.
What worries me the most is that 'AI browsers' have a larger scope by definition. If Firefox wants to join that group, it would also mean getting a built-in assistant that can browse the web automatically, fill in forms and purchase items on the user's behalf.
I know users will be able to turn it off, but I see it as a source of security breach.
didier@famille.c-f.me
you can check web browsers privacy at https://privacytests.org/ @privacytests
but there is nothing yet about AI.
mu@mastodon.nz
@didier @privacytests I wish Brave wasn't run by compete spanners
patterfloof@meow.social
oh lol, it's the cyber parrot from that short wizard comic set
(checks) Of course, same artist :D
βdrahardja@sfba.social
oh no Avian Intelligence
βTrimTab@mastodon.social
You sir are the wisest of illustrators..... Insta-meme!
JessFairbairn@aoir.social
this is so sad
βcybird@app.wafrn.net
Why's it got to be a robot bird?
#not-mad #great-art
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