alt Hacker NewsI have been not happy about it up until this post. While reading the article, I thought about it differently.
What Firefox provides today isn't drawing in new users. Those of us who use Firefox do so for a number of reasons related to privacy or security or what not.
I simultaneously like being able to use ChatGPT to look stuff up and I hate that I'm feeding the machine a profile of me. I don't use ChatGPT nearly as much anymore mostly because of that sick feeling I get in my stomach knowing whatever I tell it will absolutely be abused in some way some how.
Nobody is building a very good "thing" that lets you use AI services with a solid layer of protection. That is a new market that deserves a product. I'm not saying that I think putting AI in Firefox is a good idea. Just that I can finally see the motivation.
Personally, I think the "solution" should be some kind of stand alone product that maybe has integrations into Firefox if you have both of them installed. Keep it in it's own cage. Make the only possibility of it existing on my system be me choosing to install a specific app. And if I'm going to do that, let me also use it outside of Firefox if I want.
But at least now I see a reason for what seems like such a bone headed decision.
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I’ve never understood why Firefox doesn’t just make an extension with first-party support, instead of bloating their browser with gimmicks that a large cohort of users don’t want, and that probably shouldn’t be included by default at this point anyway. Or, shit, they came up with “Focus” for a “privacy browser”, do that and leave Firefox alone. Better yet, implement any of the litany of fixes and features your users actually requested.
This gets off topic of Firefox, but I don't see how any middleware can address your concern.
It is the very information you feed to the AI to get results that is in danger. No matter how you mask some metadata or account info, the actual in-band content is a problem.
The only solution is self-hosting of a model so the input and output cannot be monitored. And this also means running it offline, since a "black box" model that can do RAG or MCP or anything like that could also use covert channels to leak the information you are trying to control.