Firefox 142's Link Previews Have a New Option: AI-Generated Summaries (theregister.com) 73
"Good news, everyone! The new version of Mozilla's browser now makes even more extensive use of AI," writes the Register, "providing summaries of linked content and offering developers the ability to add LLM support to extensions."
Firefox 142 brings some visible shininess, but due to the combination of regional restrictions and Mozilla's progressive rollout system, not everybody can see all the features just yet... Not geofenced but subject to phased rollout are link previews, for various native-English-speaking regions. Hover over, long-press, or right-click a link and pick Preview Link, and a summary should appear. Mozilla's summary says: "Previews can optionally include AI-generated key points, which are processed on your device to protect your privacy."
"Link Previews is gradually rolling out to ensure performance and quality," Firefox says in their release notes, "and is now available in en-US, en-CA, en-GB, en-AU for users with more than 3 GB of available RAM." (The notes also add a welcome for "the developers who contributed their first code change to Firefox in this release, 20 of whom were brand new volunteers!")
The Register notes that Firefox 142 also gives developers the ability to add LLM support to extensions using wllama, a Wasm binding interfacing with llama.cpp, which lets you run Meta's Llama LLM and other models, locally or in the cloud.
"Link Previews is gradually rolling out to ensure performance and quality," Firefox says in their release notes, "and is now available in en-US, en-CA, en-GB, en-AU for users with more than 3 GB of available RAM." (The notes also add a welcome for "the developers who contributed their first code change to Firefox in this release, 20 of whom were brand new volunteers!")
The Register notes that Firefox 142 also gives developers the ability to add LLM support to extensions using wllama, a Wasm binding interfacing with llama.cpp, which lets you run Meta's Llama LLM and other models, locally or in the cloud.
So far easy to get rid of (Score:5, Informative)
Set browser.ml.* whatever relevant to false and it is gone.
For now.
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Yeap, for now. I fear in the near future it will be unavoidable,
Adding a "wait for generating..." delay won't work (Score:2)
Same reason here why waiting a few seconds for a right-click to 'compute something' before displaying a menu is annoying.
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in the near future it will be unavoidable
Maybe not. The proportion of users able to open and edit about:config (or are even aware of it's existence) is so small that it may well slip under the radar
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Mozilla likes to remove/block some options in about:config from time to time.
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It's literally a manually activated function regardless.
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PC, fear of Karens boycotting them, greed, 'if everybody else gets away with it, why won't we?'...
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Hopefully that decreases the attack surface as well, but I'd rather have this stuff as a plugin I can rip out entirely - better yet, never even download.
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Hopefully that decreases the attack surface as well
Yes. I noticed it a few days ago, checked the disablement works for the UI part, didn't see any "AI"-related network traffic after disable and haven't checked much else.
but I'd rather have this stuff as a plugin I can rip out entirely - better yet, never even download.
So say we all.
I still can't figure out why FF doesn't distribute half of its browser that way. Video, audio, whatever. Would have been fairly easy to process HTTP error codes and give you an appropriate message if something's missing.
But alas that's too much for the dumb part of the internet, and that is, sadly 99% of it.
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But alas that's too much for the dumb part of the internet, and that is, sadly 99% of it.
I don't believe that user stupidity is an adequate explanation, because they can bundle the addons and enable them automatically as part of the first run, after-update, and "refresh" processes.
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I don't either, but you're right, it should be pointed out bluntly.
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When the popular opening thread is how to get rid of the new feature... Well, I think enough has already been said.
However, I have to extend my questions on the topic. My usual question is "But is this a feature I would have donated money for?" I cannot remember the last time the answer was yes, though that feature was probably password syncing.
The new question is "Is this a feature that makes me want to continue using Firefox?" Again my memory bank is full of negative answers.
I think I would be quite inter
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Firefox could rebrand itself as the "modular browser". It already has a legitimate claim to that, compared to how Chrome gimps its plugins. Ship with the candy and "super-cool" features, just let us remove it so we also have the option of a fast and secure browser.
Re:So far easy to get rid of (Score:5, Informative)
You are asked before it is downloaded. You get a popup saying "Want to use an AI summary? OK/Cancel" and only if you click okay the model is downloaded.
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And the function is manually activated either by a long click/hold on the link or by right clicking and selecting link preview. Most Firefox users won't even notice the function exists.
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To be fair, I can imagine Mozilla nudging users to try it. They also nudged people for Firefox sync, Firefox hello, Pocket, Firefox VPN and quite a few more ideas they wanted users to try.
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See, that only deactivates it. I would like to remove it so that nothing can reactivate it.
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You can do this in the settings UI. If your language is in the list of blacklisted languages, you either need to remove it in about:config from that list, or just look into the settings UI after it is removed from blacklist. But as long as your language is blacklisted it is not active anyway.
You are also asked if you want to use it, when you trigger the first link preview. You can just say cancel on that dialog.
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Or just ... don't long press the link or don't right click and select preview? I don't understand this fascination to be so quick to disable a feature which literally does nothing unless explicitly activated.
Ignoring something that is trivially ignorable is infinitely less effort than fighting with software configuration changes.
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If the "long press" was something definite and if one could be sure this new invasive functionality won't get activated by default like those "prefetch" and "find URL from keyword" things, sure, one could do what you suggest.
Since neither of the above is true and since, as observed, this new anti-feature presents a wide surface for potential trouble, we investigate a way to deal with the unnecessary bloat that avoids such issues at the root.
Thank you for your full attention to this matter.
Also for videos? (Score:2)
I hate the 5 minute 'videos' telling a 3 line 'joke'.
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Wait until you see the 30+ minute videos with 3 minutes of useful content ... that should have just been webpages.
Unfortunately, AI summaries are nonsense and won't actually help.
AI Clap (Score:4, Insightful)
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Please change your tinfoil hat to LibreWolf.
Re: AI Clap (Score:5, Interesting)
"doesn't do anything" is relative:
To offer a preview, either the browser or a connected server must visit and summarize the link (I'm not pretending to know how it works, but SOMETHING must visit the link).
In visiting the link, it may well give the server on the other end details about you and your browser, for ad insertion or much worse - and may do so on pages you've chosen not to visit due to concerns about what may lie there.
If like me you've disabled the standard Firefox home features, preferring instead an about:blank page which doesn't spew your user-agent to dozens of links when you do nothing more than bring up the browser, you'll want this turned right off.
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How is that relative? It literally won't do anything unless you trigger it to generate the preview. If you've chosen to generate a preview of a link, you've chosen to visit that link, and that is entirely on you.
Re: AI Clap (Score:4, Insightful)
Maintaining privacy here is trivial, though the fact that link preview needs to visit the link at least once could cause other problems. Didn't we go through that already in the early days of the web?
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Given you need to manually enable the link preview on a per link basis by clicking and holding the link, or by right clicking and clicking preview, no we didn't go through this. This isn't like pre-fetch, it literally does nothing unless the user asks it to.
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This looks like it might be a useful feature for some users. If it is clearly advertised and using it is optional, I'm not sure I see a problem here.
Is there any (non-tinfoil) expectation that any related behaviour in Firefox is not being added transparently and optionally? The description seems ambiguous about what triggers these previews. If merely hovering over a link would be enough to cause a visit to another page then personally that's probably something I'd want to turn off. Others might have a diffe
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It works like that:
- Get a recent Firefox
- You may need to go to about:config and find the list of blacklisted languages and remove your language from that list
- Go to settings, turn on link previews
- Long-Click a link. A preview will appear.
- On the bottom, you see the question "Get a summary using AI?" Click OK there
- Wait for the model to download
- Next time you long click a link, you get a list of keypoints what the page is about
Alternative: Click Cancel when asked if you want to AI to disable the featu
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I don't get your problem with this feature. You have to right click on a link and select the preview, in order to see it. It only sends your UA to the links you chose to ask a preview for. This is like in Wikipedia when you hover a link.
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Wait until you learn about Firefox' link prefetch feature.
Re: AI Clap (Score:2)
This.
In prefetching links, it visits links on the loaded page.
If it's going to offer performant summaries, it probably has to visit before you ask for the summary.
If it doesn't work this way today, one can bet it will.
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Wait until you learn about Firefox' link prefetch feature.
user_pref("browser.places.speculativeConnect.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.urlbar.speculativeConnect.enabled", false);
user_pref("network.dns.disablePrefetch", true);
user_pref("network.http.speculative-parallel-limit", 0);
user_pref("network.predictor.enabled", false);
user_pref("network.prefetch-next", false);
Re: AI Clap (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure I've turned off prefetch at least once, but with all the machine replacements, half dozen RPis around the house, wife and kids machines, VMs, it's maddeningly difficult to be sure I've got all the settings in about:config where they need to be on each machine I sit down at.
Maybe I need to set up my own management infrastructure.
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"doesn't do anything" is relative:
No it's not. You're describing how the function works when activated. The reality is the activation is completely manual. You need to either long press and hold on a link or right click on it and click link preview before the function does anything at all.
It doesn't do anything in Firefox unless you explicitly ask it to.
If like me you've disabled the standard Firefox home features
Few people are as paranoid as you.
Re: AI Clap (Score:2)
"Few people are as paranoid as you."
Yeah, cuz we'll never have a fascist government that ignores the rule of law and disappears people, has masked goons yank them off the street, uses the power of the state to silence people and make corporations and countries bend to it's will.
Can't happen here.
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Same, I've migrated back to Linux as my daily driver now that W10 is going out of support.
If Firefox hadn't followed every shitty trend in Chrome/Edge for the past 15 years, it would still be a good browser. It's still maintained that status of "least bad browser" for me, but now I have to ask what are the alternatives?
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It depends on your needs. Consider Falkon, since that's a good choice (for some purposes) not usually mentioned.
Re:AI Clap (Score:4, Insightful)
And replace it with what? A browser that *actually* spies on you? Just turn off the AI bullshit and send an angry email to Mozilla. It'll make you feel better.
Ensure quality? (Score:5, Funny)
Link Previews is gradually rolling out to ensure performance and quality,
Ensure quality with AI-generated content? Good luck with that.
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Link Previews is gradually rolling out to ensure performance and quality,
Ensure quality with AI-generated content? Good luck with that.
Agreed, but, more directly, if they want to ensure "performance and quality" they could just not provide this "feature" at all.
Good news???? For Who? (Score:2)
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Hopefully, that's the joke. When the Professor says it, it's never good news.
Re:Good news???? For Who? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Good news, everyone! The new version of Mozilla's browser now makes even more extensive use of AI,"
Coming from The Register, I am pretty sure that was snark.
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It's a Futurama reference, and it's meant facetiously.
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I hope so.
Disabled by default, I hope (Score:5, Insightful)
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It is, naturally, the opposite to what you'd expect as the reasonable choice.
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Not disabled, but opt-in. If you get the first link preview, it contains a question if you want to use AI summaries or not. OK downloads the model, Cancel acts as "don't ask me again". A small settings icon exists to enable the feature later if you opt-outed earlier.
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Good or bad users are going to demand it.
In gaming there is a concept of gamers versus casuals.
A gamer will see something shitty in a game, especially micro transactions like what was in Mortal Kombat 1, and get really pissed off. Understandably so.
But then Mortal Kombat 1 has outsold Street fighter 6 and Tekken 8. And that's
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I wish they'd fix the issue that under Linux Mint, my mory use grows to over 50% and VM use gradually climbs to 95% over several weeks when doing nothing but web-browsing and this is only released when I exit FF and re-enter. Memory leaks anyone?
Please fix the bugs before you start adding more "fluff".
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I am not optimist though: the Mozilla executives for some time now seem to be determined to render Firefox both obnoxious and irrelevant.
Why make stupid guesses based on your hate for people? You could look this up and find that literally you need to manually trigger this on a link for it to do anything at all. What's that do for your assessment of executives who delivered a feature in a way that suits your use case? Let me guess nothing changes because you're more interested in a culture war than actually understanding how a feature works.
TFS ignores the negatives (Score:5, Interesting)
The summary doesn't mention these items from TFA:
"We also anticipate some misleading results. According to research both in 2024 and earlier this year, LLMs often fail to summarize accurately."
--------and
"Earlier this month, we reported that some people were finding Firefox's inference engine gobbling CPU cycles"
--------and
"Firefox now supports the wllama API for extensions, enabling developers to integrate local language model (LLM) capabilities directly into their add-ons"
I find that last one particularly troubling. An add-on could easily be sending queries and data to LLMs even if the user isn't actively using the add-on's AI features. And will authors be required to explicitly state that their add-on calls out to LLMs? I don't trust that they will. I really hope Mozilla allows the user to disable ALL of the browser's ability to reach out to LLMs, but I'm not optimistic. So while I was writing this I just ran "sudo apt-mark hold firefox". Version 141.0 may be the last Firefox I ever install.
Mozilla keeps grasping at straws and trying to re-invent the wheel via spurious UI makeovers and faddish feature adoption. For example, the latest major Thunderbird version is a hot mess, with arbitrary and nonsensical UI changes. I can't even open a new message while reading an existing one, and I had to add an extension just to have an (awkwardly placed) 'Get Messages' button. WTAF?
Between extensions and 'about:config' tweaks, it's taken me weeks just to make Thunderbird usable, and I still curse it out loud several times a day. Mozilla has lost its way, and I really miss what it used to be.
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Thank you for mentioning Thunderbird. I thought my install was corrupted or something. What the fuck are those devs doing?
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The last good version I had was 115. I got a new laptop, installed a newer LTS of Linux Mint, and got stuck with Mozilla's latest shit-show, version 128. There are one or two changes which I might grudgingly call improvements, and whole lot of pontless shits 'n' giggles stuff that heavily favoured the "shit" end of the scale.
I searched far and wide for version 115 in an Appimage or a Flatpak, or even a Snap (ugh), but had no luck. I found a deb but it wouldn't install. I considered building from source, but
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One obnoxious way to get the older version is to install an older LTS of Mint into a virtual machine and then go manually get all the bits that are Thunderbird and copy them to your new system. The hard part is making sure you have all the bits, but I don't remember how I did that.
Unfortunately, the Mint installation essentially copies a complete installation to your system, so there are no .debs of the installed packages. But I've wondered if some other distribution might install all the applications fro
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One obnoxious way to get the older version is to install an older LTS of Mint into a virtual machine and then go manually get all the bits that are Thunderbird and copy them to your new system. The hard part is making sure you have all the bits, but I don't remember how I did that.
Thanks for the idea. I don't even need the VM, as I still have an older laptop with an earlier LTS and a good version of T-Bird. But I don't have any clue about how to find all the necessary "bits" I need.
It's an interesting idea though; I may try backing up all the Thunderbird stuff on this computer, copying the executable from the older one, and running it. The error messages might give me enough info to piece it all together.
I really wish Mozilla made it easier to keep old versions running, especially in
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The LLMs mentioned are locally. Firefox doesn't "call out to" something, but runs the LLM privately on your PC. And if you are worried about addons, don't install addons. They can now, without any LLM as justification, send home all data they asked to access when you installed them.
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The LLMs mentioned are locally. Firefox doesn't "call out to" something, but runs the LLM privately on your PC.
Thanks - that's good to know. I sure hope the LLM can be disabled - that kind of activity will bring under-powered computers to their knees.
And if you are worried about addons, don't install addons. They can now, without any LLM as justification, send home all data they asked to access when you installed them.
Just picture me with my fingers in my ears, singing "la-la-la..." ;-) Seriously though, I do pay attention to the caveats when I install addons.
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It has an opt-in feature. I tried it, but found it too slow. I think waiting a few seconds for a preview is usually not worth it, as I can then also just click. I also found the model size (around 300 MB) too large for a single feature. In the future, it could potentially be used for more tasks, such as summarizing the current text selection or other simple functions and then I may try it again.
And regarding add-ons, the web addons API at least has some permission safeguards, and Mozilla tries to check if t
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No, and FOAD (Score:2)
"Good news, everyone! The new version of Mozilla's browser now makes even more extensive use of AI,"
Keep your AI slop out of my browser, you shambling fucktards.
Old news (Score:2)
The feature was introduced in 140 or 141 already.
Good AI free fork out there? (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried LibreWolf, but unfortunately they are far too restrictive for the general user; even when disabling every "privacy" features and manually enabling DRM support (unfortunately), some largely popular websites like netflix still won't work correctly.
Is there a fork out there that focus mostly on cutting down the AI stuff, so that we won't have to collectively keep going into about:config with each release to screw this kind of things?
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This feature is opt-in, and from what I can tell they're doing this to test the waters and get back in the headlines.
When there's only AI topics getting attention, this seems to be a common tactic in the industry to get investment.
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Have you considered trying Firefox? I mean we're talking about a feature that is completely manually activated. Or do you need someone to stand next to you and slap your fingers with a ruler every time you feel compulsively inclined to right click a link and click link preview?
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Have you considered that providing access to (although local) potentially long-lived LLMs to random extensions might raise the same issues as everywhere else?
Have you considered that we're getting slowly cooked into apathy
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From other comments, you have to opt-in