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Meet Orbit, Mozilla's AI Assistant Extension for Firefox
(www.omgubuntu.co.uk)
Bugsbunnyno.jpg
- 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.
That's really cool to see. A trusted hosted open source model is really missing in the ecosystem to me. I really like the idea of web centric integration too.
Thanks for the summary. So it still sends the data to a server, even if it's Mozillas. Then I still can't use it for work, because the data is private and they wouldn't appreciate me sending their data toozilla.
Technically it's a server operated by Google, leased by Mozilla. Mistral 7b could technically work locally, if Mozilla cared about doing such a thing.
I guess you can basically use the built-in AI chatbot functionality Mozilla rushed out the door, enable a secret setting, and use Mistral locally, but what a missed opportunity from the Privacy Browser Company
In such scenario you need to host your choice of LLM locally.
does the addon support usage like that?
No, but the “AI” option available on Mozilla Lab tab in settings allows you to integrate with self-hosted LLM.
I have this setup running for a while now.
Which model you are running? Who much ram?
My (docker based) configuration:
Software stack: Linux > Docker Container > Nvidia Runtime > Open WebUI > Ollama > Llama 3.1
Hardware: i5-13600K, Nvidia 3070 ti (8GB), 32 GB RAM
Docker: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/
Nvidia Runtime for docker: https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/cloud-native/container-toolkit/latest/install-guide.html
Open WebUI: https://docs.openwebui.com/
According to Microsoft, you can safely send your work related stuff to Copilot. Besides, most companies already use a lot of their software and cloud services, so LLM queries don’t really add very much. If you happen to be working for one of those companies, MS probably already knows what you do for a living, hosts your meeting notes, knows your calendar etc.
If you’re working for Purism, RedHat or some other company like that, you might want to host your own LLM instead.
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I appreciate the option to not install it.
Now if only Mozilla could migrate their built-in AI stuff to this optional extension so it doesn't come pre-installed, that'd be great
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.
The built-in AI staff [sic]... is... an accelerator to integrate with 3rd-party or self-hosted LLMs.
Users are only shown Big Tech "3rd-party" options. Mozilla made this choice intentionally.
Since Mozilla is clearly capable of developing an add-on that is not forcefully installed on user's devices, they should remove the built-in thing that endorses the highly unethical chatbots run by Google, OpenAI, etc.
Users are only shown Big Tech “3rd-party” options. Mozilla made this choice intentionally.
Well, how many users really have LLM local-hosted?
So we agree Mozilla only chose to promote Big Tech options.
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.
Textbook shooting the messenger
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.
Man, I hope this is not the new Pocket.
Can't be. Integrating Pocket fucked up something I already loved.
I'm still using Pocket 👀 (though an unofficial version)
no, i don't want to meet orbit, thank you very much.
I will try it. People are too negative about mozilla. They are a hundred times better than Google and we need them to survive.
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:
- Mozilla asked the community their opinion about AI, the general response was NO:
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/share-your-feedback-on-the-ai-services-experiment-in-nightly/td-p/60519 - Mozilla pushed a poll, tailored by shareholders in such a way that the results would appear that we still want AI:
https://mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net/100
Yet in the Lemmy comments about the poll,
again you can see that the general consensus is no:
https://lemmy.one/post/21332325
They blatantly ignore their community,
and for that we're allowed to be angry with them.
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.
You may self-host SearxNG (via Docker) and avoid direct interaction with search engines - be it google, bing, Brave or DDG.
SearxNG will act as a privacy front-end for you.
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.
Though it is an off-topic but what exact issues you faced with SearxNG?
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.
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.
The bar is in hell
"Don't worry, we're going to open source Pocket and make it optional any day now."
- Mozilla Corporation (note: not Foundation), 2017
No thanks, I'll pass.
Firefox, tell your creepy little friend he can get the fuck off my property!
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 🙂
For now, but one day Firefox will try sneak him into my house and hide him in a cupboard untill squatters rights kick in.
Even they choose to do so in future, usually there always is a about:config entry to disable it.
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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.
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No thanks im good
Cab you use it to look up instructions on how to disable it?
I've got them here: you're done.
You have to go out of your way to install ("enable") it.
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this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2024
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