After the controversial news shared earlier this week by Mozilla’s new CEO that Firefox will evolve into “a modern AI browser,” the company now revealed it is working on an AI kill switch for the open-source web browser.
On Tuesday, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation, the company behind the beloved Firefox web browser used by almost all GNU/Linux distributions as the default browser.
In his message as new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo stated that Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software while remaining the company’s anchor, and that Firefox will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.
What was not made clear is that Firefox will also ship with an AI kill switch that will let users completely disable all the AI features that are included in Firefox. Mozilla shared this important update earlier today to make it clear to everyone that Firefox will still be a trusted web browser.
I switched to LibreWolf when the privacy policy fiasco happened a while ago. It’s funny how every few weeks Mozilla manages to demonstrate why I won’t switch back.
The new CEO has also already lost me with this gem:
Even taking the statement at face value, it’s unacceptable for it to just “feel off-mission”. It should be a clear “no, never” instead of some wishy-washy answer.
But reading between the lines, such a statement is not just an off-the-cuff remark, but at best a threat to their users, and at worst a way to gauge the blowback of such a decision. They must have already taken it seriously enough to come up with the $150 million.
If I had to put up a number, I’d guess there’s a 25+% chance that Firefox will drop Manifest V2 in the next few years.