Mozilla has publicly criticized Microsoft for deploying its AI assistant, Copilot, onto Windows systems without user consent, a practice the Firefox maker describes as prioritizing corporate revenue over user rights.
In firefox they are enabled by default in the sense that you can get to them via the UI unless you flip some settings, but they don’t do anything unless you use them, including not even downloading the models until first use. So yes, I would prefer firefox not have them (except local translation which uses a local model instead of shipping it off to a remote service, which is a useful feature that is better then the alternative ways to do it), but I wouldn’t say it’s as far as hypocrisy.
this condemnation coming after they enabled the link preview popup by default because “it’s not ai” and having a big “activate ai now!!!” button take up half of it, and then doubling down when people rightfully pointed out to them that this is a textbook dark pattern, makes it hypocritical.
You have to long click or open from the control menu to get link preview
The link preview itself has a direct link to the settings page where you can disable it
It’s true that the link preview content that shows before you activate the AI summary is not AI. It is just showing the open graph content, same as any chat app or whatever
If you like the open graph content, but don’t want the AI summary, you can hit the chevron to fold the summary panel to window decoration size, and it stays folded for all future link previews even through reboots.
The AI model doesn’t download until first use
I don’t like that link preview is how they spent their time, but the misinformation and subsequent overreaction to it is insane. I only even know this stuff or that it exists at all because I thought surely it wasn’t as egregious as people were saying so I checked it out and boy was I right.
I’d be surprised if users that don’t talk about firefox on the internet even know link previews exist.
In firefox they are enabled by default in the sense that you can get to them via the UI unless you flip some settings, but they don’t do anything unless you use them, including not even downloading the models until first use. So yes, I would prefer firefox not have them (except local translation which uses a local model instead of shipping it off to a remote service, which is a useful feature that is better then the alternative ways to do it), but I wouldn’t say it’s as far as hypocrisy.
this condemnation coming after they enabled the link preview popup by default because “it’s not ai” and having a big “activate ai now!!!” button take up half of it, and then doubling down when people rightfully pointed out to them that this is a textbook dark pattern, makes it hypocritical.
I don’t like that link preview is how they spent their time, but the misinformation and subsequent overreaction to it is insane. I only even know this stuff or that it exists at all because I thought surely it wasn’t as egregious as people were saying so I checked it out and boy was I right.
I’d be surprised if users that don’t talk about firefox on the internet even know link previews exist.