After the controversial news shared earlier this week by Mozilla’s new CEO that Firefox will evolve into “a modern AI browser,” the company now revealed it is working on an AI kill switch for the open-source web browser.
On Tuesday, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation, the company behind the beloved Firefox web browser used by almost all GNU/Linux distributions as the default browser.
In his message as new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo stated that Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software while remaining the company’s anchor, and that Firefox will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.
What was not made clear is that Firefox will also ship with an AI kill switch that will let users completely disable all the AI features that are included in Firefox. Mozilla shared this important update earlier today to make it clear to everyone that Firefox will still be a trusted web browser.
It’s always been disableable… y’all just need them to spell it out for you.
I think its way more likely that the people taking issue with the addition of an AI agent into their browser has nothing to do with whether or not they have to use it or can turn it off; at least for me that is true.
Firefox has limited resources, and can only work on so much at a time. They’ve got a list of open issues a mile long, some of them probably older than some of the people reading this. I would rather they focus their efforts on keeping their tools as sharp as possible rather than making additional dull tools.
Also consider that the Firefox user base is almost entirely people who chose to use it over other bundled browsers. When they see the things they fled from in the other browsers coming to consume the one they fled to, it is obnoxious to say the least. Their users like Firefox because of its many differences from others, so the more like them it gets, the less they like it.
Open yourself to the possibility that some of AI’s detractors dislike it for reasons you mat not understand, even though you may think you do.
That’s opt out, and they repeatedly added in new AI features and flags, some defaulted either way