Firefox makes AI optional, like it probably should have been all along
- Reference: 1770116892
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/02/03/firefox_ai_kill_switch/
- Source link:
The browser maker this week announced a new set of AI controls for Firefox, headlined by a global kill switch that lets users disable every current and future AI feature in one go. The change, rolling out with Firefox 148 later this month, is Mozilla's most direct admission that not everyone is thrilled about having generative AI stapled onto their everyday tools.
In [1]a blog post announcing the move , Mozilla acknowledged the widening gap between AI boosters and everyone else. "AI is changing the web, and people want very different things from it," wrote Adjt Varma, head of Firefox, adding that its goal is to give users "clear, simple choices" about how much AI they want in their browser – including none at all.
[2]
Those choices will live in a new AI controls section in Firefox's desktop settings. From there, users can selectively turn off features such as AI-powered translations, link previews, and the browser's chat integrations, or flip a single switch to block everything, including tools Mozilla hasn't shipped yet. As Varma put it, the idea is to let people "use Firefox without AI while we continue to build AI features for those who want them."
[3]
[4]
It's a refreshingly unsubtle stance, and one that lands just days after a similar bout of AI skepticism elsewhere in browser land, with [5]Vivaldi's latest release leaning away from generative features entirely .
[6]Google to foist Gemini pane on Chrome users in automated browsing push
[7]Cursor used agents to write a browser, proving AI can write shoddy code at scale
[8]Just the Browser claims to tame the bloat without forking
[9]Coming soon: We interrupt this ChatGPT session with a very special message from our sponsors
CEO Jon von Tetzchner summed up the mood, telling The Register : "Basically, what we are finding is that people hate AI." Instead of chasing the chatbot trend, Vivaldi chose to focus on privacy and usability, betting that fewer "smart" features might actually make for a better browser.
Zoom out a little further, and the pattern gets harder to ignore. Even Microsoft, which has spent the past year stuffing Copilot into just about everything, is reportedly reconsidering how far that strategy should go in Windows 11. According to reports, [10]Redmond plans to streamline or even remove some AI features where they don't make sense.
What's shifting isn't the technology so much as the confidence behind it. After two years of being told that AI was the future and we'd all learn to love it, vendors are now discovering an awkward truth: a number of users would prefer an off switch and a quiet browser.
[11]
Mozilla's kill switch isn't the end of AI in browsers, but it does suggest the hype has met resistance. Sometimes, the most user-friendly feature is an off button – preferably one that actually works. ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aYIptTTVGpasd3I8RghEmQAAAsk&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/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aYIptTTVGpasd3I8RghEmQAAAsk&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/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aYIptTTVGpasd3I8RghEmQAAAsk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/29/vivaldi_release_ai/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/29/chrome_gemini_pane/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/22/cursor_ai_wrote_a_browser/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/19/just_the_browser/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/17/openai_chatgpt_ads/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/02/microsoft_ai_spend_copilot/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aYIptTTVGpasd3I8RghEmQAAAsk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Not good enough
Indeed. It bothers me that time was spent putting the features in there regardless.
Re: Not good enough
I do not understand the shouting about FFs addition of AI. When FF asked if I wanted an AI thing integrated, I clicked No, and have not heard from it again. (FF 147.0.2 now, mostly Windows.) Compared to other SW, that is OK.
And all SW will present new features: Ordinary users do not go looking for unknown features on their phones, computers, cars... Technical users may have read about the upcomming features or gone exploring for it. Ordinary users will only know if shown.
Still, the LLM AI experiment on the whole needs to end.
Re: Not good enough
Type about:config - if any of these are set to true FF dictated that you were going to have AI enabled, whether you like it or not:
Shortcut to finding them once inside config is to search for .ml. (dot-ml-dot) - ML: for machine learning. I can almost guarantee you that some, it not all, of these are turned on!
browser.ml.enable
browser.ml.chat.enabled
browser.ml.chat.page
browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled
browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled
browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled
extensions.ml.enabled
sidebar.notification.badge.aichat
browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge
browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge
browser.ml.chat.menu
Re: Not good enough
Yeah, but does that mean AI is active? I have no AI account (anywhere or attached to FF), and have *zero* indication that AI is active. The best I can tell, those (and other) switches are just defaults for when a user activates AI on the main switch. Again I do not think this is wrong for ordinary users. (Apart for the underlying LLM part.)
Re: Not good enough
Training...
Re: Not good enough
> The person responsible needs to be held accountable
Probably the person whose job it is to hold everyone else accountable. Moz lost its mojo a long time ago.
Re: Not good enough
Absolutely, I entirely agree, remove the features entirely.
And barring that, I wish they'd make it opt-in rather than opt-out. Same with DDG, who I've been trying to replace as my primary search engine, but haven't yet found one that I like. I think it's great that the foxes and ducks are making these features opt-in, but I am constantly reimaging my machines and clearing cache and cookies, and it adds extra steps to a process to manually rid myself of these intrusions.
"Basically, what we are finding is that people hate AI"
In other news, creatures of a ursine persuasion are understood to defecate in areas of arboreal vegetation.
Nothing like that in Chrome which brings us to ( accessible via chrome://flags ):
#ai-mode-omnibox-entry-point
#omnibox-allow-ai-mode-matches
#enable-lens-overlay
#prompt-api-for-gemini-nano
#prompt-api-for-gemini-nano-multimodal-input
#summarization-api-for-gemini-nano
#writer-api-for-gemini-nano
#rewriter-api-for-gemini-nano
#proofreader-api-for-gemini-nano
#permissions-ai-v3
#permissions-ai-v4
#permissions-ai-p92
This one is debatable, suit yourself:
#autofill-enable-ai-based-amount-extraction
Took me half an hour to find because the experimental flags page has grown out of proportion.
Cheers!
I wonder if they'll pay me for [1]my idea .
Still, the difference between Enabled and Available is somewhat... ambiguous?
[1] https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/08/13/firefox_ai_scoffing_power/#c_5124510
There are better alternatives out there
Too late, Mozilla, already switched to Waterfox that does not have AI built in, exactly for that reason.
Re: There are better alternatives out there
Same. Bye FF. It was nice knowing you.
Re: There are better alternatives out there
About a year ago I switched from Firefox to Zen and it has worked well for most of the time. Hugely tweakable but I ended up with something that looked like standard Firefox. Muscle memory is tricky to retrain. Just a couple of days ago I changed yet again to Konform, yet another Firefox derivative. Feels a tad quicker than Zen and a bit more stable. I'll probably go full time with it tomorrow.
"Disabled"
But it's still there .
'Enhancements'
I note it says 'enable ai enhancements' and not, for arguments sake, 'turn off LLM slop'
I moved to waterfox when they changed the t&c's so whatever. Always a shame Mozilla has pissed all that money and opportunity up the wall though.
Firefox ai edition
If they can release a developer edition then they can release an ai edition.
Call it FAE and stop bothering the rest of us with your ai schemes.
Wrong way round
The browser maker this week announced a new set of AI controls for Firefox, headlined by a global kill switch that lets users disable every current and future AI feature in one go.
If included in Firefox at all (and there is a strong argument that if it exists at all, then it should be an optional extension and not included in the main product, for reasons of bloat), then it should be turned off by default, and strictly opt-in.
Still, using Firefox is still a million times better than letting Chrome hoover up all your personal info and send it home to Alphabet.
After two years of being told that AI was the future and we'd all learn to love it, vendors are now discovering an awkward truth: a number of users would prefer an off switch and a quiet browser.
The "truth" they're discovering is that their assumption that AI would end up being used and ultimately accepted by default if they simply kept shoving it into peoples' faces turned out to be wrong.
Too late. Already switched to Waterfox and realised how much better it is.
Not good enough
Shouldn't be included in the browser at all, not even with a "toggle on" switch. If they were adamant they knew best (which they obviously are - despite serving a user base who will be naturally repelled by such decisions) it absolutely should have been implemented off by default, with a toggle button for on. The way it was forced on users was a disgrace.
The implementation (in this browser, of all browsers) was a terrible and desperate decision driven by an egomaniac.
Firefox's desktop market share in the past 12 months has dropped from 6.26% to 4.05%, and is still falling (source: statcounter) and remember that the decline is in spite of the uptake in Linux - where FF is almost always the default - as people look for alternatives to US tech (so the drop from established users is likely even more pronounced).
Imagine the headlines if any other tech company on the planet had shed more than 1/3rd of its user base in 12 months like FF has! It's absolutely baffling this hasn't been called out more.
And those users are never coming back, even if this decision was reversed in its entirety. Those users are now all using Waterfox, or Vivaldi, etc.
Be under no illusion - this has been an absolute disaster for FF. The person responsible needs to be held accountable!