Let’s have a look at how it works now, so we don’t need to speculate.

When I configured Firefox for AI, I got to choose my LLM of choice. I chose Claude. Now, if I select some text, I get a context menu option that says “Ask Anthropic Claude”, which branches into these options:

• Summarize
• Explain
• Quiz me
• Proofread
• Remove Anthropic Claude

Notice the last one? That’s not a “buried” option. That’s as front and center as the options to use it. Mind you, if I decide to not use it, then nothing happens. The only thing that’s changed is that I now have an optional shortcut for LLM features that open in a sidebar instead of a new tab.

Oh, the humanity.

No, you don’t have to trust anything. It’s open source, you can read the code.

And if you’re feeling paranoid, you can compile it yourself.

Yeah, basically a nothingburger.

Actually having tried it a bit now I can see that it does add some value. I like that it’s aware of content boundaries. Still don’t think I’d actually ever use it, but it’s cool that it exists.

I agree. They’re quite vague about what the feature would actually do, and I have a hard time believing that I would use it.

I think it would probably be wiser spending time and effort on other things (like a really good built-in Dark mode or better memory management), but I don’t fault them for experimenting. Worst case scenario they make something that sucks and either remove it later, or you can fork it off.

If Firefox “touched the Adblocks” in the same manner that Chrome did, the forks wouldn’t be able to mitigate it. That’s the whole point.

They won’t, because that’s not why they make Firefox. But just to make it clear: the forks you mentioned are very lightly modified alternative builds of Firefox. If that makes you happy, more power to you, but don’t pretend like there’s an equivalence between Mozilla and Google.

Lol. I don’t believe for a second that you were ever a Firefox user.

What makes you think that user preferences will be reversed on update? When was that ever an issue with Firefox? You can still use userChrome.css files from decades ago ffs.

Why should a feature like this need to be enabled for use? If you don’t want to use it, don’t use it. It’s that simple. I never used the “Take Screenshot” option in Firefox, and honestly I would have removed it if I could, but I’m not going to throw a tantrum over it.

Chill out. It’s literally just a sidebar for your LLM of choice.

Don’t like it? Don’t use it.

Don’t want it to clutter up your context menu? The same menu contains the option to disable it. Boom! Problem solved.

Gonna use Chromium-based with no µBlock because your feelings got hurt? Have fun.

Not sure what you mean by “will it operate in the background”? The current (and planned) features collect no data. They “operate” when you use them. Disabling them will remove them from the UI.

• AI chatbot in sidebar (you can choose which chatbot you want, similar to how you choose default search engine)
• Shake to summarize page (on mobile)
• AI Window (separate from Normal and Private window, upcoming). Apparently it lets you chat with an AI agent to power-browse the internet.

Gerald Broflovski

skankhunt42 has been trolling them hard and they can’t let it go

It’s literally just a sidebar that lets you do queries to your LLM of choice. It’s not even in the way. If you don’t want to use it, you just don’t use it.