Firefox 142's Link Previews Have a New Option: AI-Generated Summaries (theregister.com)
- Reference: 0178844960
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/08/24/0547251/firefox-142s-link-previews-have-a-new-option-ai-generated-summaries
- Source link: https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/22/firefox_142/
> Firefox 142 brings some visible shininess, but due to the combination of regional restrictions and Mozilla's progressive rollout system, not everybody can see all the features just yet... Not geofenced but subject to phased rollout are link previews, for various native-English-speaking regions. Hover over, long-press, or right-click a link and pick Preview Link, and a summary should appear. [2]Mozilla's summary says : "Previews can optionally include AI-generated key points, which are processed on your device to protect your privacy."
"Link Previews is gradually rolling out to ensure performance and quality," Firefox says [3]in their release notes , "and is now available in en-US, en-CA, en-GB, en-AU for users with more than 3 GB of available RAM." (The notes also add a welcome for "the developers who contributed their first code change to Firefox in this release, 20 of whom were brand new volunteers!")
The Register notes that Firefox 142 also gives developers the ability to add LLM support to extensions using [4]wllama , a Wasm binding interfacing with llama.cpp, which lets you run Meta's Llama LLM and other models, locally or in the cloud.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/22/firefox_142/
[2] https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/142.0/releasenotes/
[3] https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/142.0/releasenotes/
[4] https://github.com/ngxson/wllama/
Also for videos? (Score:2)
I hate the 5 minute 'videos' telling a 3 line 'joke'.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait until you see the 30+ minute videos with 3 minutes of useful content ... that should have just been webpages.
Unfortunately, AI summaries are nonsense and won't actually help.
AI Clap (Score:3)
I just flipped the majority of my computing to Linux because of AI. Perhaps I will leave Firefox, too. I don't want GPU/CPU grinding spyware on my computer.
Re: (Score:1)
Please remove your tinfoil hat. It's simple to disable, and even when enabled, it doesn't do anything unless you specifically ask it to. Stop trying to create a drama-filled environment to live in.
Re: AI Clap (Score:2)
"doesn't do anything" is relative:
To offer a preview, either the browser or a connected server must visit and summarize the link (I'm not pretending to know how it works, but SOMETHING must visit the link).
In visiting the link, it may well give the server on the other end details about you and your browser, for ad insertion or much worse - and may do so on pages you've chosen not to visit due to concerns about what may lie there.
If like me you've disabled the standard Firefox home features, preferring inste
Re: (Score:2)
How is that relative? It literally won't do anything unless you trigger it to generate the preview. If you've chosen to generate a preview of a link, you've chosen to visit that link, and that is entirely on you.
Re: (Score:2)
Maintaining privacy here is trivial, though the fact that link preview needs to visit the link at least once could cause other problems. Didn't we go through that already in the early days of the web?
Re: (Score:2)
This looks like it might be a useful feature for some users. If it is clearly advertised and using it is optional, I'm not sure I see a problem here.
Is there any (non-tinfoil) expectation that any related behaviour in Firefox is not being added transparently and optionally? The description seems ambiguous about what triggers these previews. If merely hovering over a link would be enough to cause a visit to another page then personally that's probably something I'd want to turn off. Others might have a diffe
Re: (Score:2)
Same, I've migrated back to Linux as my daily driver now that W10 is going out of support.
If Firefox hadn't followed every shitty trend in Chrome/Edge for the past 15 years, it would still be a good browser. It's still maintained that status of "least bad browser" for me, but now I have to ask what are the alternatives?
Re: (Score:3)
And replace it with what? A browser that *actually* spies on you? Just turn off the AI bullshit and send an angry email to Mozilla. It'll make you feel better.
Ensure quality? (Score:4, Funny)
> Link Previews is gradually rolling out to ensure performance and quality,
Ensure quality with AI-generated content? Good luck with that.
Good news???? For Who? (Score:2)
"Good news, everyone! The new version of Mozilla's browser now makes even more extensive use of AI,"
Re: (Score:2)
Hopefully, that's the joke. When the Professor says it, it's never good news.
Re:Good news???? For Who? (Score:4, Insightful)
> "Good news, everyone! The new version of Mozilla's browser now makes even more extensive use of AI,"
Coming from The Register, I am pretty sure that was snark.
Disabled by default, I hope (Score:4)
I am not optimist though: the Mozilla executives for some time now seem to be determined to render Firefox both obnoxious and irrelevant.
Re: (Score:2)
It is, naturally, the opposite to what you'd expect as the reasonable choice.
TFS ignores the negatives (Score:3)
The summary doesn't mention these items from TFA:
"We also anticipate some misleading results. According to research both in 2024 and earlier this year, LLMs often fail to summarize accurately."
--------and
"Earlier this month, we reported that some people were finding Firefox's inference engine gobbling CPU cycles"
--------and
"Firefox now supports the wllama API for extensions, enabling developers to integrate local language model (LLM) capabilities directly into their add-ons"
I find that last one particularly troubling. An add-on could easily be sending queries and data to LLMs even if the user isn't actively using the add-on's AI features. And will authors be required to explicitly state that their add-on calls out to LLMs? I don't trust that they will. I really hope Mozilla allows the user to disable ALL of the browser's ability to reach out to LLMs, but I'm not optimistic. So while I was writing this I just ran "sudo apt-mark hold firefox". Version 141.0 may be the last Firefox I ever install.
Mozilla keeps grasping at straws and trying to re-invent the wheel via spurious UI makeovers and faddish feature adoption. For example, the latest major Thunderbird version is a hot mess, with arbitrary and nonsensical UI changes. I can't even open a new message while reading an existing one, and I had to add an extension just to have an (awkwardly placed) 'Get Messages' button. WTAF?
Between extensions and 'about:config' tweaks, it's taken me weeks just to make Thunderbird usable, and I still curse it out loud several times a day. Mozilla has lost its way, and I really miss what it used to be.
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you for mentioning Thunderbird. I thought my install was corrupted or something. What the fuck are those devs doing?
No, and FOAD (Score:2)
"Good news, everyone! The new version of Mozilla's browser now makes even more extensive use of AI,"
Keep your AI slop out of my browser, you shambling fucktards.
So far easy to get rid of (Score:5, Informative)
Set browser.ml.* whatever relevant to false and it is gone.
For now.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeap, for now. I fear in the near future it will be unavoidable,
Re: (Score:2)
Hopefully that decreases the attack surface as well, but I'd rather have this stuff as a plugin I can rip out entirely - better yet, never even download.
Re: (Score:2)
> Hopefully that decreases the attack surface as well
Yes. I noticed it a few days ago, checked the disablement works for the UI part, didn't see any "AI"-related network traffic after disable and haven't checked much else.
> but I'd rather have this stuff as a plugin I can rip out entirely - better yet, never even download.
So say we all.
I still can't figure out why FF doesn't distribute half of its browser that way. Video, audio, whatever. Would have been fairly easy to process HTTP error codes and give you an appropriate message if something's missing.
But alas that's too much for the dumb part of the internet, and that is, sadly 99% of it.
Re: (Score:2)
> But alas that's too much for the dumb part of the internet, and that is, sadly 99% of it.
I don't believe that user stupidity is an adequate explanation, because they can bundle the addons and enable them automatically as part of the first run, after-update, and "refresh" processes.