Orbit by Mozilla is a new AI-powered assistant for the Firefox web browser that makes summarising web content while you browse as easy as clicking a
  • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
    1432·
    6 个月前
    • no account or login required.
    • it’s an addon (and one you have to go get), not baked-in.
    • limited to queries about content you’re currently looking at.
      (it’s not a general ‘search’ or queries engine)
    • llm is hosted by mozilla, not a third party.
    • session histories are not retained or shared, not even with mistral (it’s their model).
    • user interactions are not used to train.
  • LucidBoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    526·
    6 个月前

    I want to point out that by downvoting this, you’re reducing the visibility of the post for other people, therefore making less people informed of the change.

    • lemmeBe@sh.itjust.works
      72·
      6 个月前

      My thoughts exactly.

      However, I always found upvotes and downvotes a bit confusing because upvote is almost synonymous with “like” and downvote with “don’t like”. With upvote, that assumption isn’t that problematic but with downvote it is, like in this case where post will have less chance of being seen.

  • 1984@lemmy.today
    4611·
    6 个月前

    I will try it. People are too negative about mozilla. They are a hundred times better than Google and we need them to survive.

    • Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      501·
      6 个月前

      Yes we need them to survive,
      yes they’re better than Google.

      But no we’re not being too negative/hard on them!

      Lately Mozilla has been pulling a lot of anti-consumer yet pro shareholder shit.

      AI is a perfect example of that,
      unwanted by the majority of their community, yet still forced upon us by shareholders, for now through an optional addon, which appears to be a foot in the door, which can quickly grow into a baked in addon which ships with FireFox by default.

      Sources:

      They blatantly ignore their community,
      and for that we’re allowed to be angry with them.

      • apis@beehaw.orgEnglish
        151·
        6 个月前

        Yup.

        DuckDuckGo’s search engine introduced AI assist and an AI chat as opt-out features, which it repeatedly re-enables at random, with no ability to disable it permanently, even though we’ve been able for years to set a bookmarklet to make all our other DDG settings persist.

        Users are very unhappy, with requests for a way to permanently disable AI features ignored, receiving only patronising responses from DDG.

        No matter, DDG’s utility for searching has deteriorated these past years so severely, even relative to the deterioration we’ve seen with many other options, that I wonder will it survive.

        It is always unfortunate when a recommended privacy tool shifts away from privacy, but several doing so all at once is alarming.

          • apis@beehaw.orgEnglish
            2·
            6 个月前

            Have tried out SearxNG without self-hosting, via different instances, but had to abandon it as it is way, way beyond my mental capabilities to get it to work.

            I doubt I could manage to self-host, having looked into Docker for some other matter.

            Using Mojeek currently, which isn’t great but not too terrible.

            • Karna@lemmy.mlOP
              1·
              6 个月前

              Though it is an off-topic but what exact issues you faced with SearxNG?

              • apis@beehaw.orgEnglish
                1·
                6 个月前

                Well, it worked initially, then more often than not my searches produced no results or confusing error messages.

                Experimented a lot with the SearxNG settings, and also with my browser and firewall settings in case there was some issue there, and eventually gave up.

                I was unable to find information online about the issues I experienced, in part because I had no idea how to describe them in order to find help.

                Think I tried it in three different browsers, over the course of a month or so, but primarily in Firefox.

                • Karna@lemmy.mlOP
                  1·
                  6 个月前

                  To be honest, I never tried publicly available instances of any privacy front-ends (SearxNG, Nitter, Redlib etc.). I always self-host and route all such traffic via VPN.

                  My initial issue with SearxNG was with the default selection of search engines. Default inclusion of Qwant engine caused irrelevant and non-english results to return. Currently my selection is limited to Google, Bing and Brave as DDG takes around 2 sec to return result (based on the VPN server location I’m using).

                  If you still remember the error messages, I might help to help fix that.

    • Karna@lemmy.mlOP
      111·
      6 个月前

      The built-in AI staff,you referred to, is nothing but an accelerator to integrate with 3rd-party or self-hosted LLMs. It’s quite similar to choosing a search engine in settings. This feature itself is lightweight and can be disabled in settings if not required.

        • Karna@lemmy.mlOP
          21·
          6 个月前

          Users are only shown Big Tech “3rd-party” options. Mozilla made this choice intentionally.

          Well, how many users really have LLM local-hosted?

    • Karna@lemmy.mlOP
      281·
      6 个月前

      It’s an add-on, not something baked-in the browser. It’s not on your property at the first place, unless you choose to install it 🙂

      • DUMBASS@leminal.spaceEnglish
        273·
        6 个月前

        For now, but one day Firefox will try sneak him into my house and hide him in a cupboard untill squatters rights kick in.

        • Karna@lemmy.mlOP
          94·
          6 个月前

          Even they choose to do so in future, usually there always is a about:config entry to disable it.

  • ramblingsteve@lemmy.worldEnglish
    186·
    6 个月前

    I’m starting to warm up to this stuff. There is a future rapidly hurtling towards us where, if you take the time to read and think for yourself, you will become a genius. It was happening already in some stem fields where people used GUI tools without ever reading what the buttons did, and if you took the time to read the manuals and the underlying methods, you could become vastly more competent than anybody else in your team. This “AI” bullshit is just extending the lazy culture out to every piece of information on the web, where average Joe is already unable to concentrate beyond 140 characters. Those that take the time to learn the fundamentals and read deeply will have vastly superior knowledge of any subject, while the majority will be spoon fed superficial summaries filled with errors and no way of realising.

    • caseyweederman@lemmy.ca
      38·
      6 个月前

      That was written by an AI, wasn’t it?
      If anything brings me around on AI, it’ll be the “kids these days and their dang quill and parchment, the chisel and stone tablet was good enough for me so it should be good enough for everyone” argument.

    • Vincent@feddit.nl
      6·
      6 个月前

      I’ve got them here: you’re done.

      You have to go out of your way to install (“enable”) it.

    • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
      5·
      6 个月前

      the ‘ai chatbot’ in the ‘lab’ is different.

      the chatbot is just basically an optional conduit between you and and a third party ai-powered ‘search’/‘chat’ service, so that you can use firefox to access it.

      you’re still subject to any rules, policies, costs, account requirements, usage limits, etc. set by those third-parties.

      • Karna@lemmy.mlOP
        2·
        6 个月前

        BTW, Lab option works better privacy wise (than Add-on) if you have LLM running locally, IMO.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    66·
    6 个月前

    This is why I don’t use direct Firefox. I use soft forks like Librewolf, Mull and now Fennec