Mistral x Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing
mistral.ai
Open, private and multilingual AI is coming to your web browser. Mistral and Mozilla team up to put powerful, trustworthy AI where you already browse.
  • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    7 days ago

    I don’t trust any feature that uses the word “AI.”

    Ideally, such things should be transparent to the user. As in features that are useful without having to understand the underlying programming mechanisms.

    Take FF’s local translation. That’s an immensely useful feature. No one cares that it uses a language model or about any of the details, because it just works well enough, and is useful enough to stand on its own as an advantage over Chromium.

    …If they have to brand a feature to make it appealing, that’s a bad sign. Otherwise why TF would I want expensive tab sorting or things like that?

  • CommanderCloon@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    Anything not to use Chinese model huh. Aren’t Mistral’s models woefully outmatched by literally everyone else in the AI field, by every metrics?

  • Willdrick@lemmy.worldEnglish
    292·
    8 days ago

    I don’t really mind AI features where it makes sense. That being said, as someone else commented, this should have been a plugin.

    I’ll add on top of that: this should have been a plugin wholly developed by Mistral. Mozilla should stop spending time and money on side features and focus on the browser and its engine. It still is way slower than any chromium based browser, lacks features that have been standard on chromium for years (eg. HDR video playback) and it’s way less efficient on battery than the competition.

    Complaining about Firefox doing this and groveling on “I’m good, I’m on <random fork>” is spitting upwards: even the most modified forks like Zen still rely on Mozilla’s aging engine.

    • Feyd@programming.devEnglish
      12·
      6 days ago

      Firefox actually picked up on good improvements at around the same they started with the AI stuff. Tab groups and vertical tabs were something people wanted forever and they implemented excellently. Firefox does have HDR.

      I don’t know if firefox is slower than chromium in benchmarks or something but it’s certainly not noticeable to me in real usage.

      By all means criticize AI features, but please don’t lie about everything else.

      • Willdrick@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        6 days ago

        I am on the latest version of FF on Linux and I don’t have HDR working, not on YouTube, nor on standalone players like Jellyfin. Yes my display is HDR and Wayland+gnome is exposing HDR properly to games and Helium (chromium fork).

        Since some govt and utilities sites only work on “chrome” (borked even with user agent switcher set to chrome+win on FF) I had to get this other browser, and the speed difference is noticeable on most sites, even tho theoretically FF should be faster since its stripping a lot of crap with uBlock Origin.

        Tried flatpak’d Brave and also runs snappier than FF.

  • eicker@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    4215·
    8 days ago

    Mozilla choosing Mistral for Firefox Smart Window feels like a rare AI partnership that actually fits the product. Privacy, zero data retention and multilingual models are a much better match for Firefox than turning the browser into another Big Tech AI funnel.

  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    282·
    7 days ago

    Mozilla is in the sweet spot of basically being the only available browser that isnt chrome, that has adblocking.

    and they are doing everything in their power to fuck it up by chasing this bullshit AI trend thats already dying on the vine.

  • ZapBeebz_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    192·
    8 days ago

    As long as this is opt-in (i.e. disabled by default), then sure. Otherwise, I’ll just have to find a new browser.

    • neclimdul@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      8 days ago

      ive been seeing screenshots of the new vibe coded new tab replacement that are totally broken and the redesigned ui has overly rounded components that cover up text components and hard coded “ai” purple gradients that are nearly impossible to turn off with going into about:config…

      So I have low expectations of this going well and seeing that second option in my future.

      • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        7 days ago

        first thing i did when deved updated to the ‘new’ look (157)…

        search for ‘nova’ in about:config

        turn off the new rounded gradient shit.

  • solrize@lemmy.mlEnglish
    12·
    8 days ago

    It doesn’t say anything about how this works. “No data retention” suggests that data is going to a server that’s processing it but then not retaining it. That’s bad, this type of feature should run entirely on the client.

    Also, there’s a proprietary AI model doing the work, even if inference is in the client. It says “open weight” but that’s like letting people download a program as a compiled binary, the exact opposite of what FOSS is supposed to mean. It’s an open/free model only if the training data and algorithms are also public, not just the trained weights.

    • CommanderCloon@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      Issue is that local AI hog vram, are slow and small models. Or if you don’t have a compatible GPU, it uses the CPU which is even slower.

      If AI is the future, I really hope it’s local, but with the equipment people have at home, local AIs are a non-starter.

      IMO it’s enough to justify not shipping those AI features at all but I guess that’s where FF execs disagree.

      • solrize@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        AI inference is doable on home equipment. AI training is less feasible, but nobody builds their whole Debian distro from source either. It’s enough that the source is available and you can rebuild any component if you want ot do so.

  • strop@lemmy.mlEnglish
    6·
    7 days ago

    I gotta admit, I don’t really mind AI as long as it doesn’t exist anywhere in any amount