The saga continues! A Firefox developer has taken to social media to note there will be some sort of “kill switch” to completely remove AI features in the wake of the news about more AI features coming along with the new CEO.
Speaking on Bluesky and Mastodon across multiple posts that I’ll quote below to save you clicking around they said:
Something that hasn’t been made clear: Firefox will have an option to completely disable all AI features. We’ve been calling it the AI kill switch internally. I’m sure it’ll ship with a less murderous name, but that’s how seriously and absolutely we’re taking this.
All AI features will also be opt-in. I think there are some grey areas in what ‘opt-in’ means to different people (e.g. is a new toolbar button opt-in?), but the kill switch will absolutely remove all that stuff, and never show it in future. That’s unambiguous.
I’m not asking for faith in our direction – the thing I love about the Firefox community is how open, honest, and technical it is.
But I do ask that you don’t have the opposite of faith. Like, try not to be determined that we’re going to do the wrong thing here.
I hope we can (re)gain your trust here. I don’t personally work on this stuff, but I’ll try hard to answer any questions you have. And other than that, I’ll get back in my lane, and stick to web platform stuff. – Jake (@jakearchibald.com)
Personally, it all still makes me very uneasy. The list of problems with generative AI is endless. I’m happy they are committed to a simple switch to turn it all off, but the fact that they’re still pouring resources into AI is a problem. A browser simply doesn’t need to have a ton of AI features bloating it. To me this feels like Mozilla are just doing what every other company seems to be doing – chasing a ridiculous bubble for marketing and buzzwords.
What do you think to this? Let us know in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
