Disable Firefox AI Slop

I restarted Firefox after an update and my laptop fan started going berzerk.

The culprit was a background thread pegged at 100% CPU for one of the new AI “features” in Firefox; presumably doing inference for a local model.

I disabled this junk, and you should too.

Steps:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Click “AI Controls” on the left sidebar.
3. Click the “Block AI enhancements” radio button.
4. Set all of the drop-down menus to “Blocked” in the “On-device AI” section.
5. Set all of the drop-down menus to “Blocked” in the “AI chatbot providers in sidebar” section.
6. (Optional) Send Mozilla a nastygram. Let them know how you feel about features which waste your CPU, battery, disk space, and time for no discernable benefit. Profanity encouraged!

This absurd gaggle of misfeatures should have always been opt-in, not opt-out.

I also resent the Orwellian doublespeak that Mozilla is using to describe this nonsense.

Definitions:

• opt-in: A feature which is disabled by default. The user must take an explicit action to enable the feature.
• opt-out: A feature which is enabled by default. The user must take an explicit action to disable the feature.

The intentional obfuscation suggests that Mozilla was aware it was inappropriate to enable this claptrap by default.

George Lakoff wrote about the use of Orwellian language in politics in “Don’t Think of an Elephant!”:

But we should recognize that they use Orwellian language precisely when they have to: when they are weak, when they cannot just come out and say what they mean. Imagine if they came out supporting a “Dirty Skies Bill” or a “Forest Destruction Bill” or a “Kill Public Education” bill. They would lose. They are aware people do not support what they are really trying to do.

Orwellian language points to weakness – Orwellian weakness. When you hear Orwellian language, note where it is, because it is a guide to where they are vulnerable.