I was wondering why there were so many people tagging others in this thread, it is not normally what I see on Lemmy, so I had a look at the instances people were posting from, as well as where this thread was posted.

It was quite impressive.

Oop created this thread using Mastodon, the thread is located on an mbin instance, other mastodon users posted in it, and here I am reading it and posting in it from Lemmy.

Really cool that it works this well!

Adding for anybody that wants to disable it all:

user_pref("browser.ml.enable", false); // general switch for machine learning features in Firefox, though it might only apply to some of them, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1971973#c11
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.enabled", false); // AI Chatbot (https://docs.openwebui.com/tutorials/integrations/firefox-sidebar/#additional-about-settings)
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.sidebar", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.menu", false); // remove "Ask a chatbot" from tab context menu
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.page", false); // remove option in page context menu (https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/issues/1230)
user_pref("extensions.ml.enabled", false); // might only be relevant for app developers
user_pref("browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled", false); // "Use AI to suggest tabs and a name for tab groups" in settings
user_pref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled", false);
user_pref("pdfjs.enableAltTextModelDownload", false); // "This prevents downloading the AI model unless the user opts in (by enabling the toggle to "Create alt text automatically" from "Image alt text settings" when viewing a PDF)"
user_pref("pdfjs.enableGuessAltText", false); // (disabling this might be redundant when AltTextModelDownload is disabled)

grow a goddamn spine and listen to your users. People do not like these features and expect better from you

This might shock you but Firefox is trying to appeal to people who are not already firefox users.

An additional shocking revelation of which you seem to be unaware is that a lot of people do find value in these chat bots.

I do mostly kind of agree with you. Yes Gen AI is over-hyped. Yes their is a dangerous investment bubble. Yes I wish Firefox would just focus on being a great browser.

@Eeveecraft @mozilla @firefox When they started adding all that crap, I tried & just kept using Librewolf. Still firefox based, but I don't see all that new bloat anymore. It just sucks there isn't LibreWolf on android.

i had a bunch of AI BS disabled from a prior paste into my user.js so i actually got jumpscared with an unlabeled entry in my context menu. i decided to dig into about:config to find anything else under browser.ml. and set to false or blank it out.

@Eeveecraft @mozilla @firefox What are you talking about? Mozilla saw that everyone was going to their browser to get away from Google, so naturally they did the intelligent thing and became more like Google. I mean, it makes perfect sense, right?There is a setting in about:config to completely disable it, but I'd recommend that you switch to a fork like LibreWolf on PC or IronFox on Android to ensure stuff like that will be disabled to begin with even if later updates would turn it on.

I find this very useful, I wouldn't normally click in articles just read the title, so at least now I can read a summary.

You sound like an old conservative bitching about the Internet in the 90s. Were you furious 10 years ago about the word "server"?

AI is not NFTs, the metaverse, or Windows Recall. It's not a monolith. It cannot simply be reduced to "good" or "bad". It is a marketing term applied to a natural progression of computing technology. It has pros and cons. It will become more power efficient over time. Some use cases will go away and we will find areas where it shines. Be angry at how Big Tech is abusing it, sure, but educate yourself about what it is or continue to splinter yourself culturally away from society.

I'm one of the people who actually likes the (e.g. DDG) AI overview for searches. Mainly because it cites its sources.

It allows me to bypass the SEO'd shit factories that make regular search useless.

Having said that, I'd seen that context menu option too and cringed.