“AI is changing the web, and people want very different things from it,” Ajit Varma, Firefox’s vice president of product, writes in the announcement. “We’ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI. We’ve also heard from others who want AI tools that are genuinely useful. Listening to our community, alongside our ongoing commitment to offer choice, led us to build AI controls.”

some people want nothing to do with AI

other people just want the AI to actually do something

But for once, it is a good thing

I stopped using it 2 years ago because that's no longer true. Time and time again I was having to dig around for whatever new setting got created and defaulted to a bad setting for a bad reason (spoiler: they want money)

At that point what am I gaining by not using Chrome, Edge, or what I ultimately use now, which is Brave. At least with Brave I get useful features like having access to Tor for basic things, great cryptocurrency support, etc.

It provides a single place to block current and future generative AI features in Firefox.

Features they could have chosen not to introduce in the first place.

https://chipp.in/security-privacy/total-opt-out-how-to-use-f...

I hope the Firefox team learns from this because a vibrant, healthy Firefox is vital as an alternative to the browser engine duopoly controlled by commercial tech giants.

IMO, hard to do, though that would streamline browsing and up the quality of it.

Cheers.

* Translations * Image alt text in Nightly PDF viewer * Tab group suggestions * Key points in link previews * Chatbot providers in sidebar

Is there a way to simply have these not present at all, for people who don't want any of them?

None of this is useful. Just stop.