| |
| ▲ | TeMPOraL 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Why is there a chat bot sidebar??? To save users from copy-pasting to a separate chatbot instance, or installing sketchy extensions? It's clunky, but it's helpful and exposes users to more alternatives. AFAIK it can be made to connect to local models now, too. LLM side tab is a powerful mode of AI use that most people haven't experienced yet; for some reason this space seems underdeveloped publicly relative to some proprietary/internal solutions at some companies that I have knowledge of. > I don't want to use an "AI browser with AI features disabled", I just wanna use a regular web browser... Is there a difference beyond branding? FWIW, branding does matter and I hope Firefox remains a "browser with (optional) AI" and not "AI browser". | | |
| ▲ | mort96 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't know what Mozilla means by "AI browser", but one would assume it means more than "regular browser with an optional chat bot sidebar". I don't wanna figure out what it means, I don't wanna use anything that could fairly be described as an "AI browser". | | |
| ▲ | godelski 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I don't know what Mozilla means by "AI browser",
Well it's not like they're being quiet about it. They've openly discussed what features they're working on and planning. So maybe start there. > "regular browser with an optional chat bot sidebar". I don't wanna figure out what it means
It's not a hard thing you figure out. Optional means you don't have to use it. In fact, if you never open it you'll never know it exists and you'll never have to interact with it. It is an opt in system. No one is making you do anything so stop acting like it.Fwiw, I don't use the AI sidebar. I'd have forgotten it existed if HN didn't bring it up as if it's shoved in your face like some chatbot in an IDE. But I guess if it was the latter people wouldn't be angry | | |
| ▲ | mort96 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Your quote doesn't make sense, you can't just rip a sentence fragment out of its context and criticize it. The thing I don't wanna figure out what means is the term "AI browser". I know what a chat bot sidebar is. |
|
|
| |
| ▲ | gkbrk 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Because people like chat bot sidebars. My code editor has a built-in chat bot sidebar that I use every day. It's not a huge stretch that people who use chatbot sidebars in other applications would also want one in their browser. ChatGPT is the #6 most popular website in the world, why wouldn't a browser want tighter integration with such a popular kind of service? | | |
| ▲ | mort96 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Should Firefox build in a separate side bar for every popular website? Would you want a Facebook side bar and Facebook account integration? I wouldn't. | | |
| ▲ | gkbrk 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The way users use Facebook and LLMs are so massively different, it almost seems like a bad faith argument to equate them. Facebook is mostly scrolling the timeline and passive consumption. It doesn't benefit from being on the side because the content you interact with on Facebook is completely separate from the content on your other tabs. In contrast, LLMs have ongoing conversations that the user can come back to, and each conversation might relate to multiple tabs that the user is working on. On top of that, it's a very common occurrence that the user has questions about, or a task to be done using the content of the current page. This makes LLM and chatbot integration much more useful than a Facebook integration. Also if you have the Facebook Messenger installed, Firefox already gives you an integration to share things with your Facebook contacts. | |
| ▲ | sunaookami 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Funfact: Firefox already had a Facebook sidebar and integration back in 2012! https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/firefox-introduces-new-s...
The Social API was later removed though because it was wildly unpopular (unrelated but man look at the good macOS and Firefox design in the screenshot...) | | |
| ▲ | mort96 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Haha, that's so typical Mozilla. Proves my point I suppose. |
| |
| ▲ | godelski 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They kinda already do. Google is built in, just search right in there url bar. You also got DDG, Bing, Wikipedia, Amazon, EBay? They make it easy to add YouTube, I wouldn't be surprised if you could add Facebook. And like every browser does that. It's been that way for like over a decade... | | |
| ▲ | mort96 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Okay, and? Is anyone complaining about being able to search your favorite search engine from within Firefox? Do you genuinely think this is comparable to Facebook integration? Do you believe that it Mozilla announced Facebook account integration and a Facebook side bar tomorrow, people's reaction to that would be, "oh this is just like what they did with search, this is fine"? If not, isn't your comment a tiny bit disingenuous? |
|
| |
| ▲ | godelski 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > My code editor has a built-in chat bot sidebar that I use every day.
Even as a vim user I don't get why an AI chat bot shoved into an IDE is endlessly praised while an optional hidden chatbot in a browser is treated like some grave insult. Last I checked, OpenAI was the 5th most visited website. No one complained that browsers made it easier to interface with the most popular website (Google) by directly typing into the url bar. FFS you can also do that with the 8th most popular website, Wikipedia.I seriously don't understand why everyone is upset about that. Do what I do and just don't open it or interact with it. No one is making you use it. It's trivial about if bytes because it's literally just a wrapper. So it doesn't affect you, why let it live rent free in your head and make you angry? Just sounds like you're looking for things to complain. | | |
| ▲ | mort96 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I ... am not convinced that the people who praise Microsoft for shoving Copilot into VS Code are the same people who criticize Mozilla for shoving ChatGPT into Firefox Personally I dislike both, and VS Code marketing itself as an "AI code editor" is one of many reasons why I would never consider using VS Code. |
|
| |
| ▲ | franga2000 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why is there a search bar? A browser is more than a URL bar and a rendering engine. Search is a common operation for many people and having a unified entrypoint for different search providers in the browser makes sense. Chatbots are also quite common now and having a single chat box that users can use with any chatbot provider (even local ones!) is a good feature. If anything it helps break the big players' chances at a monopoly, since it makes switching between providers easier. Why is it so hard for people to just...not use a feature they don't like. Sure, the popup was annoying, but I still like that it let me know this feature exists. I don't use it now, but it might be useful to me in the future or so I can recommend it to someone who needs something like that. | |
| ▲ | wazoox 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The chatbot sidebar is lacking one important feature, the ability to use your locally running LLMs. I had to install "Page Assist" to reproduce its functionality using my local ollama instance. |
|
