When Mozilla first announced its plans to transform Firefox into an AI browser, there were lots of concerns voiced about the implications of injecting so much artificial intelligence into the web browser. The organization realized that the backlash was such that it was going to have to take action.
As such, it was announced that for anyone who did not like this idea of a browser bursting with AI features, there would be the option of disabling them. More than this, there would be a kill switch to disable everything in one fell swoop.
Now Mozilla has proved itself to be true to its word. Firefox 148 has been released and in addition to all of the AI features the organization has been talking about, there is indeed the option to kill them all, or to take a more fine-grained approach.
The AI features are as follows:
- Translations, which help you browse the web in your preferred language.
- Alt text in PDFs, which add accessibility descriptions to images in PDF pages.
- AI-enhanced tab grouping, which suggests related tabs and group names.
- Link previews, which show key points before you open a link.
- AI chatbot in the sidebar, which lets you use your chosen chatbot as you browse, including options like Anthropic Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Le Chat Mistral.
Explaining how it has chosen to implement an AI kill switch, Mozilla says:
You can choose to use some of these and not others. If you don’t want to use AI features from Firefox at all, you can turn on the Block AI enhancements toggle. When it’s toggled on, you won’t see pop-ups or reminders to use existing or upcoming AI features.
What is interesting is that in addition to giving Firefox the option of flicking a switch to completely disable AI, the organization will be collecting telemetry data about how many people do so. Details of this can be seen on Bugzilla.
At time of writing, Mozilla is yet to publish the full release notes for Firefox 148, but when they are published they will be available here.