At Mozilla, we work hard to make Firefox the best browser for you. That’s why we're always focused on building a browser that empowers you to choose your own path, that gives you the freedom to explore without worry or compromises. We’re excited to share more about the updates and improvements we ha...
  • 087008001234@lemmy.ml
    32·
    7 months ago

    Productivity boosters like Tab Grouping, Vertical Tabs, and our handy Sidebar will help you stay organized no matter how many tabs you have open – whether it’s 7 or 7,500. Plus, our new Profile Management system will help keep your school, work, and personal browsing separate but easily accessible. Customizable new tab wallpapers that will let you choose from a diverse range of photography, colors, and abstract images that suits you most. Intuitive privacy settings that deliver all the power of our world-class anti-tracking technologies in a simplified, easy-to-understand way. More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important things quicker.

    …

    We’re looking at how we can use local, on-device AI models – i.e., more private – to enhance your browsing experience further. One feature we’re starting with next quarter is AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs, which makes it more accessible to visually impaired users and people with learning disabilities. The alt text is then processed on your device and saved locally instead of cloud services, ensuring that enhancements like these are done with your privacy in mind.

    • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      20·
      7 months ago

      Four panel image sourced from the intro to the Powerpuff Girls cartoon. In Panel 1, which is mainly colored blue, the silhouette of a man pours sugar into a bowl. In Panel 2, colored green, the silhouette is adding what can be assumed to be salt. In Panel 3, colored pink, he is pouring flowers, hearts and sparkles into the bowl. He has a happy smile. Finally, in Panel 4, colored bright red, black goo from a broken jar is flowing into the bowl, as if an accident happened that broke the jar. For the first time, we can see the face of the man. He looks clearly distressed, and is backing down from the scene.

      to be faiiiiiiiir, the way they’re going about it is very reasonable. i’d rather have no AI but, if i had to have it, i’d rather have that than anything else.

      • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
        2·
        7 months ago

        The use case they mention (generating alt text for images in PDFs) is something that couldn’t work otherwise and, even if it isn’t perfect, can be a big help to people with visual impairments, while at the same time doesn’t get in the way of the users that don’t need it.

        If they keep focusing on these kinds of features instead of going fully Clippy like Google and Microsoft are doing, I think it’s fine.

        • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          1·
          7 months ago

          honestly, you’re right. I still worry that it could encourage an attitude of abled people not caring about alt text, because “oh well AI’s gonna do it anyway, who cares!”, but, really, abled people already don’t care about alt text, so…

          • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
            2·
            7 months ago

            In the specific case of PDF most users wouldn’t even know where to add an alt text. Depending on how you generate the PDF it might even be impossible. So I think Mozilla has the same concern as you, and that’s why they aren’t adding this to images in HTML (yet).

    • cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de
      19·
      7 months ago

      If AI object/scene recognition is done locally, wouldn’t it increase the memory footprint of the browser process. Also how many objects can it identify if its run on a modest 4-8 GB RAM system? One more question is would they ever introduce anonymised telemetry for these generations?

      • Vincent@feddit.nl
        10·
        7 months ago

        If it works anything like Firefox Translations does, the model is only downloaded on-demand, so it wouldn’t affect your browser usage if you don’t use the feature.

        • FaceDeer@fedia.io
          91·
          7 months ago

          The state of the art for small models is improving quite dramatically quite quickly. Microsoft just released the phi-3 model family under the MIT license, I haven’t played with them myself yet but the comments are very positive.

          Alternately, just turn that feature off.

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
        33·
        7 months ago

        If Firefox uses even more memory it’ll bend the memory-time continuum so much it becomes a memory singularity.

        The concept of memory ceases to exist at the boundary to the Firefox process. What happens beyond it is unknown, except that no matter how much memory you throw at it, none ever gets out.