this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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Mozilla under fire for Firefox AI "bloat" that blows up CPU and drains battery (www.neowin.net)
submitted 1 month ago by moe90@feddit.nl to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

The pathological need to find something to use LLMs for is so bizzare.

It’s like the opposite of classic ML, relatively tiny special purpose models trained for something critical, out of desperation, because it just can’t be done well conventionally.

But this:

AI-enhanced tab groups. Powered by a local AI model, these groups identify related tabs and suggest names for them. There is even a "Suggest more tabs for group" button that users can click to get recommendations.

Take out the word AI.

Enhanced tab groups. Powered by a local algorithm, these groups identify related tabs and suggest names for them. There is even a "Suggest more tabs for group" button that users can click to get recommendations.

If this feature took, say, a gigabyte of RAM and a bunch of CPU, it would be laughed out. But somehow it ships because it has the word AI in it? That makes no sense.

I am a massive local LLM advocate. I like “generative” ML, within reason and ethics. But this is just stupid.

[–] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

When I'm browsing around with multiple tabs open, the last thing I want is something to start moving them around and messing my flow up. This is a solution looking for a problem.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yup

Auto naming functionality is neat in some cases, like the AI chat UI itself

  • It's convenient to have names when toggling between a few recent chats or searching through 10s or 100s of chats later on
  • I spawn new chats often and it's tedious to name them all
  • I don't have a strong preference for what the title is as long as it's clear what the chat was about

Tab groups don't hit those points at all

  • I'll have a handful of tab groups
  • I don't make them often
  • I have a strong preference for what it's called, and the AI will have trouble figuring out exactly what I'm using those sites for
[–] Godort@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The pathological need to find something to use LLMs for is so bizzare.

Venture capital dumped so much money into the tech without understanding the full scope of what it was capable of. Now they're so in so deep that they desperately NEED to find something profitable it can do, otherwise they'll lose the farm.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Firefox has little financial motivation for this, though?

Other than getting "AI" investor money, if that's the plan... But otherwise it just feels like they're following a meme.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It makes a lot more sense when you realize that the Mozilla corporation is a for profit run by the same techno-fascist aggrandizing bait-and-switch narcissists as the rest of SV.

I've been saying it for years, but I will never donate to Firefox until it is freed from the shackles of a for profit corporation that can use your donation for any profit motive it sees fit; not even related to Firefox.

[–] Gigasser@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Isn't the "for-profit" Mozilla Corporation owned by the "non-profit" Mozilla Foundation though?

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I don't care. It's a corrosive force that causes them to pay for over priced CEO's and integrate services that nobody cares about into Firefox (like pocket) or that runs against their principles (container VPN's exclusive to Mozillas for-profit VPN).

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[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Firefox really does seem to have lost the plot... they don't seem to go five minutes without slamming their dick in another drawer. It starts to look like they're in to it.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I never trusted them. Who would ever set up a nonprofit owned by a for profit company if not to decieve people?

I do appreciate the Open Sourced GECKO engine, though. I like Waterfox.

[–] The_Decryptor@aussie.zone 1 points 1 month ago

a nonprofit owned by a for profit company

It's the other way around, the foundation owns the corporation.

Still feels like the corporation is the one making decisions though.

[–] 58008@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Literally no one on this green earth asked for this shit. In fact, we've been pretty direct about how much we don't want it.

It's exhausting.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Well, stupid people want it and they do use it when its shoved in their face. Like how samsung updated and BLATANTLY made their peice of shit AI button TAKE OVER THR POWER BUTTON so when you try to turn off your phone little old granny gets confused that an ai agent pops up and starts recording you. Absolutely infuriating and I wish torture on whoever implemented that shit.

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[–] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Mozilla has stopped working on developing and improving their products, and is now entirely focused on adding trendy terms and garbage, to feed money to their C*Os.

[–] michaelmrose@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

They in the last year or so added built in vertical tabs , much better hardware support for decoding video on Linux, continue to support manifest v2 and high quality ad blocking. Have increased performance and memory usage.

In the last 7 years performance is night and day different as is multiple process performance and switched away from unmaintainable old broken addon system.

They also created one of the premiere programming languages which is making in roads in the Linux kernel.

[–] Mika@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago (12 children)

TBH despite I don't like this specific idea, nor use Firefox directly, I do like the usage of local inference vs sending your data to thirdparty to do AI.

They just needed to do it OPT IN, not OPT OUT.

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[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children) 
browser.ml.chat.enabled   false
[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You only disable the chat. Overall setting seems to be browser.ml.enable.

[–] burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago

I also see an extensions.ml.enable. Anyone with actual knowledge of the source code know what those are doing?

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

browser.ml.enable

Thanks!

[–] biofaust@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago

I went for it and noticed it had the Reset button available, clicking which it switched to "false". I am on Zen Browser and I never turned anything like that on.

Any idea why it appeared like that?

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I hate how many of these you have to do on any new installation of Firefox.

[–] Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A space for vanilla ff experience extension, sort of like sanemacs?

[–] burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago

That's basically what librewolf, waterfox, and a whole bunch of others are. In the same way manjaro and endeavor etc. are opinionated arch installs with spackling, those browsers are opinionated settings-already-selected versions of firefox.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

about:config
in your address bar

[–] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Do you have to enable the feature first? Because I'm on v141 and I don't see this feature. Complaining about a useless and draining feature that you yourself enabled is a special kind of stupid tbh.

[–] eyekaytee@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Bro, several users have taken to the Firefox subreddit, this is definitely worthy of being the most upvoted post on Lemmy rn

[–] Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Because people seem to have a special hate boner for Firefox on here.

And please don't call me bro.

Edit: hate not hat

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

This is sarcastic right lol

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