Firefox adds AI Window, users want AI wall to keep it out
- Reference: 1763068089
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/11/13/firefox_adds_ai_window/
- Source link:
On Thursday, Ajit Varma, VP and head of product management at Firefox, [1]announced but did not yet launch AI Window, an opt-in browsing mode that offers a third option alongside the standard browsing window and the Private Window.
"It's a new, intelligent and user-controlled space we're building in Firefox that lets you chat with an AI assistant and get help while you browse, all on your terms," explained Varma. "Completely opt-in, you have full control, and if you try it and find it's not for you, you can choose to switch it off."
[2]
Varma previously worked as a product manager at Meta and at Google, where product decisions tend to happen without the consent of the masses. But his evident enthusiasm for AI in the browser hasn't quelled dissent in the Firefox community.
[3]
[4]
[5]AI Window isn't even available yet – it's a placeholder where the project will be developed in the open – but the objections have already begun.
"Once again Mozilla is SPRINTING to chase after the stupidest tech brained trends and not actually focused on improving the product at all," reads the first comment posted to the [6]Mozilla Connect discussion thread from an individual not affiliated with Mozilla.
[7]
The second comment inquires about a browser settings flag to disable AI Window.
The third says, "The only AI related thing I want is a single, prominent, easily accessible switch to turn off absolutely all opt-out AI features. No chasing about:config entries."
[8]
Image of AI Window interface in Firefox - Click to enlarge
Other recent threads on Mozilla Connect, like " [9]Remove AI garbage " and " [10]Please DO NOT Add Agentic AI to Firefox ," offer a snapshot of how Firefox users feel about AI. And the Mozilla Support forums for Firefox contain many posts along the lines of " [11]Getting rid of AI " and " [12]How do I purge AI from my browser ."
Were this the view of only a few, Mozilla would not need to chide its community for rejecting AI, a [13]sentiment also voiced over GitHub's determination to have everyone use Copilot. The AI Window web page begins, "The web is changing, and sitting it out doesn't help anyone."
Jolie Huang, senior staff product manager at Mozilla, echoes that point in the above-mentioned Mozilla Connect post titled, "Building AI the Firefox way: Shaping what's next together."
[14]
"We recently [15]shared how we're approaching AI in Firefox with user choice and openness at the center of everything we build," Huang wrote. "We've heard from many of you who'd prefer not to have AI in your browser at all, and we get it: We will soon provide additional settings for you to control how AI is used (or not) in Firefox.
"Nonetheless, standing still while technology moves forward doesn't benefit the web or the people who use it. That's why we see it as our responsibility to shape how AI integrates into the web, in ways that promote openness, transparency, and choice. That way, users and developers can use it freely, help shape it, and truly benefit from it."
[16]AI pilots keep crashing, mostly because firms skip the prep, survey finds
[17]Russia's first autonomous humanoid robot staggers and falls on debut
[18]OpenAI GPT-5.1 adds more personalities, loses inhibitions
[19]Google apes Apple, swears cloud-based AI will keep your info private
Mozilla's own experience with AI hasn't been entirely beneficial. In 2023, it added [20]an AI help bot to developer documentation service, [21]only to disable it . There were layoffs in 2024, alongside [22]a plan to refocus on AI . The [23]arrival of Firefox 136 in March 2025 saw the debut of a sidebar for AI bot interaction.
A few months later, [24]reports of performance issues associated with [25]local LLM processing surfaced, which failed to mollify user concerns about adding AI services. And earlier this month, volunteers assisting the Japanese arm of the Mozilla Support (SUMO) community [26]resigned over concerns that the company's AI SumoBot has been editing and overwriting Japanese support articles without allowing time for human review.
Beyond the cost in community goodwill, Mozilla's embrace of AI also entails labor costs: [27]AI-related bugs have to be evaluated and fixed.
Nabiha Syed, executive director of The Mozilla Foundation, told The Register in August that the internet isn't necessarily experienced in the browser and that AI is the next mediating technology.
"The throughline is it's artificial to define the internet as something in a browser or something in a social web feed or AI," [28]she explained . "They're all part of a digital experience."
The digital experience for almost every browser today includes AI. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari, Opera Neon, and Brave have all incorporated AI services to varying degrees. And AI vendors OpenAI and Perplexity have introduced their respective Atlas and Comet browsers as distribution platforms for their services.
Only Vivaldi continues "sitting it out," as Mozilla puts it, to " [29]keep browsing human ." ®
Get our [30]Tech Resources
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-window/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aRZjBV3L8mit-q54wJi5awAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aRZjBV3L8mit-q54wJi5awAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aRZjBV3L8mit-q54wJi5awAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.firefox.com/en-US/ai/
[6] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/building-ai-the-firefox-way-shaping-what-s-next-together/td-p/109922
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aRZjBV3L8mit-q54wJi5awAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/11/13/aiwindowscreenshot.jpg
[9] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/remove-ai-garbage/m-p/96009
[10] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/please-do-not-add-agentic-ai-to-firefox/m-p/109737
[11] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1536088
[12] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1530298
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/05/github_copilot_complaints/
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aRZjBV3L8mit-q54wJi5awAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] http://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-window/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/13/survey_ai_projects_failure_no_prepare/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/13/aidol_russia_robot_fail/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/13/openai_gpt51_adds_more_personalities/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/12/google_touts_private_ai_compute/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/03/mozilla_developer_network_adds_ai/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/06/mozilla_ai_explain_shift/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/14/mozilla_layoffs_ai_pivot/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/04/firefox_136/
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/firefox_ai_scoffing_power/
[25] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1982278
[26] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/717446
[27] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=%22AI+%22
[28] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/17/nabiha_syed_remakes_mozilla_foundation/
[29] https://vivaldi.com/blog/keep-exploring/
[30] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Add-On
I'm not a software engineer, so this might be a dumb suggestion. Couldn't Mozilla just offer the AI window as an Add-On? That way they could gauge user approval by the number of users who used it. If a majority of users used it regularly then they'd have a good case for incorporating it.
Re: Add-On
From a software dev: not a dumb question at all.
The only "problem" anyone could have with that is if the real intent was to meld the AI-ness so deeply into the program that nobody would be able to avoid it. But nobody would ever try to do such a thing.
Re: Add-On
Also a software dev: not a dumb question.
But the problem is this isn't an idea set by a developer. This is a marketing/sales/accountant wet dream. They know full fucking well if they offered this as an add on the take up would be minimal. They think that if it's forced on you, you will use it whether you like it or not, and then they can go to their VC sauna buddies and show them how popular their implementation is and get more money for more spa treatments and/or sauna visits.
Re: Add-On
WordPress tried its bloated Gutenberg editor as a plugin. Got a terrible response, so they put it in core WP.
Did Mozilla not do it as an opt-in precisely because they knew what reaction it would get?
Hey, Ajit!
How'd that Metaverse thing work out for you back at Meta? Looking like LLM's sold as "AI" is going the same way.
fixed that for you!!!
Hey, Idjit
.....
The web is changing, and sitting it out doesn't help anyone
If somebody wants to make their website invoke an LLM, that is their business; there is no need for the browser to do anything beyond its core tasks of rendering HTML/CSS and running Javascript (and of those only the HTML is actually *necessary*, the other two are only there to make it prettier).
No, wait. What am I saying? Of course that is not true!
We all remember how the web browsers had to change and incorporate special shopping mode features before we could buy anything online. Or how they needed to merge a complete copy of Postgres before we could be shown anything extracted from a database, like a train timetable. And, of course, us techies were all kept waiting for years because of Mozilla's reluctance to merge all of both KVM *and* VMWare into the single build before we were ever able to monitor our Data Centre loads from a WebUI.
I've been using Firefox for a long time and now this comes along.
Just - NO.
So now which browser should I be looking at using?
Suggestions welcome.
Mullvad.
Oh! the joy of living in the ESR. I'll not see this AI flaff for more than 3 quarters. In July next year at the soonest, can delay it ~20 more weeks if needed.
¿What's not to like?
Long Live ESR
Fuck off, Varma
If this appears in my Firefox Developer Edition, it's back to Vivaldi for me.
If you use Firefox - check this setting
It seems that Firefox enabled "Firefox Relay" to protect my email setting after the latest update (or it may have done in earlier updates. I do not know for sure). After I turned it off manually a while ago.