I think Mozilla's position seems perfectly reasonable. AI options for those who want them and not for those who don't. Seems fine to me. I don't have to use features I don't want. I already don't...
I think Mozilla's position seems perfectly reasonable. AI options for those who want them and not for those who don't. Seems fine to me. I don't have to use features I don't want. I already don't use lots of features of Firefox.
I am not particularly interested in AI in my browser but I know plenty of people who use it regularly for various things and would like some browser integration. Why should Firefox only cater to me and not them?
I skimmed some comments (here), and I think the common sentiment is that those people (commenting) are upset that Firefox is spending time, energy, money on AI-related anything, when they could be...
I skimmed some comments (here), and I think the common sentiment is that those people (commenting) are upset that Firefox is spending time, energy, money on AI-related anything, when they could be working on other issues or features that are more important to them. Also: the assumption among them is that most Firefox users don't want AI, and so, in adding AI-related stuff, they might be repelling and squandering what little browser market share they have.
What a lot of people in the forum thread seemed to think is that Mozilla developing this feature is taking up human time and effort that could be better spent on making Firefox better. That...
What a lot of people in the forum thread seemed to think is that Mozilla developing this feature is taking up human time and effort that could be better spent on making Firefox better. That they're trend-chasing instead of building in better privacy features, for example, that would differentiate them from all the Chromium browsers. And I think I agree; if only a small percentage of Firefox users would be interested, surely they already have their own preferred tools they use instead of whatever gets shoehorned into Firefox?
I could say the same for any of the features J Random Commenter would prefer Mozilla spent time on though. Without access to Mozilla's metrics and user testing results it's impossible to guess at...
if only a small percentage of Firefox users would be interested, surely they already have their own preferred tools they use instead of whatever gets shoehorned into Firefox?
I could say the same for any of the features J Random Commenter would prefer Mozilla spent time on though. Without access to Mozilla's metrics and user testing results it's impossible to guess at what "Firefox users" want. There are around 90 million people in that group, after all.
Take me, for example - I've been using Firefox from before it was even called Firefox - I don't care about AI, I also don't really care about privacy either. I want a fast, stable browser with good support for modern web standards and decent cross-device sync. Firefox already does that well enough for me, so I'm not bothered about them spending time on things I'm not currently interested in. If those other features help bring more people over to Firefox, great!
I also imagine, as someone who messed about with Firefox's "AI integration," that it didn't take much time to implement. My complaint is that the feature actually seems kinda half-baked or without...
I also imagine, as someone who messed about with Firefox's "AI integration," that it didn't take much time to implement. My complaint is that the feature actually seems kinda half-baked or without the ability to change how it's implemented in any real way. The AI slideout window isn't persistent enough so you have to continually log in to your chosen AI service. It's a separate window/instance so the magic login links from email don't work correctly. Every time you highlight something a dumb AI logo pops up, blocking the right-click context menu. Click-and-hold to generate an AI overview isn't terrible until you have to click and hold something that you don't want an AI overview for.
I imagine it took relatively little time to implement the feature and I feel like it shows in the poor implementation.
Their track record for those who followed their decisions for the last decade don't strike confidence, though. It's pretty clear "their numbers" aren't working either. Something needs to change.
I could say the same for any of the features J Random Commenter would prefer Mozilla spent time on though.
Their track record for those who followed their decisions for the last decade don't strike confidence, though. It's pretty clear "their numbers" aren't working either. Something needs to change.
Firefox's market share (and everyone else's) has been pretty flat for the last five years which isn't too bad in a field which is both dominated by Chrome and also full of forks and new products...
Firefox's market share (and everyone else's) has been pretty flat for the last five years which isn't too bad in a field which is both dominated by Chrome and also full of forks and new products (OK, not 'new', they're all Chromium derivatives) coming along every five minutes. Firefox isn't competing with Chrome because nobody is, but it is competing with Opera and Brave and Vivaldi and Kiwi and and and - and I think they're doing pretty well to just maintain the share they have in that environment.
Google destroyed Mozilla, nobody else - although ironically they also saved them with the Google Search deal. There was nothing the foundation could have done in the face of Google's aggressive marketing and solid engineering behind Chrome. There is no feature they could have added which would have changed that. Especially given they had a far worse product at the time Chrome was eating everything else.
The fact that these days Firefox is technically close to Chrome and in some cases even performs better is actually a major engineering achievement on Mozilla's part and we shouldn't let the assorted feature fluff (or lack thereof) around their excellent core work (Gecko and SpiderMonkey) detract from that.
Well that's the big issue. If they piss off the people who already left chrome, they will find that those people will look more at Brave, or Ladybird. This isn't some disengaged audience that just...
Firefox isn't competing with Chrome because nobody is, but it is competing with Opera and Brave and Vivaldi and Kiwi and and and
Well that's the big issue. If they piss off the people who already left chrome, they will find that those people will look more at Brave, or Ladybird. This isn't some disengaged audience that just chooses what the king of search points them at. It's one who cared enough t make a move to begin with.
In the grand scheme of tech, they aren't the worst, but these little things add up and competitors are getting more competitive.
What do you think should be changed?
within a feasilble range, or in an ideal world? here's a read on the latter that basically concudes with "we need a leadship overhaul with proper vision, not 'just copy Google', and to focus on being a lean product that doesn't trend chase for maximum revenue".
I think the realistic scenario is simply to re-commit to the core ideas of firefox and stop making controveries every other month that defy this. Deleting promises to not sell your data when your market line is "we aren't Google" doesn't look good.
Well, they do need to chase revenue. Mozilla exists almost entirely at the whim of Google. That's not great. Being self-supporting would be good. Which means... revenue, which comes from users....
focus on being a lean product that doesn't trend chase for maximum revenue".
Well, they do need to chase revenue. Mozilla exists almost entirely at the whim of Google. That's not great. Being self-supporting would be good. Which means... revenue, which comes from users. They're not going to convert any new users by leaving everything the same. Sure, there's a subset of people like me who don't want lots of stuff and another smaller subset who will huff off to another project if there's a new feature they don't like but they're honestly a tiny minority. Mozilla will know how many uninstalls they get after releasing a certain feature (I bet it's next to zero anyway) What about getting new users? Doing the same (no)thing isn't going to get a different result.
This has been going on for as long as there has been the web (yes, unfortunately I am that old). I remember when javascript was considered a silly trend. CSS too. Who even wants in-browser video support anyway? "What's so important about adding support for x/y/z, I don't want/need it?" has been a constant complaint of a certain subset of users since Netscape. If Mozilla listened to the people complaining about every new thing we'd still be in text-only mode and Firefox's userbase would be counted in the thousands rather than the tens of millions we have today.
They can't not piss off a subset of their users because there is nothing they can do which is acceptable to every single user - including doing nothing. I've been on the development end of this kind of thing and you cannot listen to the "keep everything the same forever" crowd, you have to keep moving forward and honestly, they piss and moan loudly and then they shut up until you announce the next thing which they're sure is going to sink your entire project.
Deleting promises to not sell your data when your market line is "we aren't Google" doesn't look good.
My understanding is that this didn't happen. It was a change of language in a legal document which a small number of people mis-interpreted and then it got incorrectly reported everywhere. This is another issue when it comes to dealing with the very engaged and vocal minority group of users - people often get stuff wrong.
I'm not saying this is what happened but as an example, Mozilla might say "we've adding a context menu option to summarise page content with AI, it literally took one dude half a day of gentle hacking" and some people hear "we're turning your entire browser into an agentic system where all your search history and keyboard input will be emailed to Sam Altman personally" then blog furiously about that and someone else reads it, takes it as fact and before you know it, Nabiha Syed is literally Satan.
I really hope is stays that way and doesn't become where I'm being prodded every other day to "try this new AI thing!" I rejected a dozen times before. That's the real issue.
I don't have to use features I don't want.
I really hope is stays that way and doesn't become where I'm being prodded every other day to "try this new AI thing!" I rejected a dozen times before. That's the real issue.
There's plenty of legitimate uses of AI in a browser, even if they're not for everybody. Visually impaired users can query their browser to better understand the current page context, and have it...
There's plenty of legitimate uses of AI in a browser, even if they're not for everybody.
Visually impaired users can query their browser to better understand the current page context, and have it describe images without alt tags.
The local translation feature is a more private version of Google Translate, and a great resource for non-English users or those engaging with foreign texts.
Even some of the power features like automatic tab grouping will be useful to a certain percentage of users who feel lost in a sea of tabs.
Mozilla has been careful to make these features opt-in and targeted, and I think they're doing a great job. Much of the response feels reactive, and not considerate to users other than ourselves.
All your examples have one thing in common: They are not generative GPT/LLMs. I hate that OpenAI, Anthropic etc basically get to stand next to the more useful applications of the technology and...
All your examples have one thing in common: They are not generative GPT/LLMs.
I hate that OpenAI, Anthropic etc basically get to stand next to the more useful applications of the technology and say „Yeah, I‘m with those guys.“
I would think that all examples were generative AI. Fx runs a local NMT model for translation, which may not be a literal transformer but works on the same premise of token generation. Tab...
I would think that all examples were generative AI. Fx runs a local NMT model for translation, which may not be a literal transformer but works on the same premise of token generation. Tab grouping is similarly a tiny model they distilled to focus on smaller, more categorical training. Even text descriptions are generative because they produce tokens via their CLIP training.
Essentially, they all work on a core premise of training a model via backpropagation, then running input data through to generate tokens containing relevant context and understanding.
Damn, yes. Somehow I was thinking of only summarization, where other algorithms like e.g. TextRank are less resource intensive. So „2.5 of the examples“ … sigh.
Damn, yes. Somehow I was thinking of only summarization, where other algorithms like e.g. TextRank are less resource intensive.
Translation could also be an LLM problem. It's not the fastest or lightest solution, but it does produce much better results. See Kagi Translate vs Google Translate for example.
Translation could also be an LLM problem. It's not the fastest or lightest solution, but it does produce much better results. See Kagi Translate vs Google Translate for example.
I want one, but not a chatbot. I just want an AI that can sort/tag bookmarks and delete/fix broken links. Maybe show me a random one from my "To Read" folder. I've got far too many links I saved...
I want one, but not a chatbot. I just want an AI that can sort/tag bookmarks and delete/fix broken links. Maybe show me a random one from my "To Read" folder. I've got far too many links I saved intending to go back to and never did.
Same here. I know I would have been better served by saving the HTML/text of articles I wanted to read. Thus avoiding link rot. But I didn't do that. And I also should have categorized my...
Same here. I know I would have been better served by saving the HTML/text of articles I wanted to read. Thus avoiding link rot. But I didn't do that. And I also should have categorized my bookmarks better. But I'm 1200 bookmarks in, and I would like some help with the mess I have now.
I've always thought the interface for bookmarks was oddly antiquated. Like it basically hasn't changed in 20 years.
I certainly do not. However, since Firefox pulled that stunt with suggesting that selling of user data ( they back pedaled ) in a new TOS I have since been using LibreWolf, a privacy-centric fork...
I certainly do not.
However, since Firefox pulled that stunt with suggesting that selling of user data ( they back pedaled ) in a new TOS I have since been using LibreWolf, a privacy-centric fork of Firefox.
I'm having a hard time imagining what this 'AI window' is supposed to do. I think the existing quick access to LLMs from the sidebar and context menus makes sense even if I don't use it, but what...
I'm having a hard time imagining what this 'AI window' is supposed to do. I think the existing quick access to LLMs from the sidebar and context menus makes sense even if I don't use it, but what more could you possibly want that would warrant... that? What does it do? Is it functionally a chatbot PWA? Does it... generate the web pages for you? I don't get it.
This is frustrating for sure, it’s so odd seeing companies whose core user base is most likely against AI go after it. Another example is Kagi, they keep shoving AI features everywhere. Firefox...
This is frustrating for sure, it’s so odd seeing companies whose core user base is most likely against AI go after it. Another example is Kagi, they keep shoving AI features everywhere.
Firefox will be easy enough to find an alternative to though.
Kagi is also introducing anti-AI features too, though; they just put out a thing where you can report and deweight AI search results. So they're on both sides of the fence there.
Kagi is also introducing anti-AI features too, though; they just put out a thing where you can report and deweight AI search results. So they're on both sides of the fence there.
Yeah, it’s a bit confusing their business direction. Personally I like my products 100% AI/LLM free, but I’m sticking with Kagi for now because the alternatives are so much worse.
Yeah, it’s a bit confusing their business direction. Personally I like my products 100% AI/LLM free, but I’m sticking with Kagi for now because the alternatives are so much worse.
Shame to hear even Kagi is falling into this. I would hope the benefit of the premium market is precisely that you don't need to trend chase and instead focus on what paying customers want. If...
Shame to hear even Kagi is falling into this. I would hope the benefit of the premium market is precisely that you don't need to trend chase and instead focus on what paying customers want.
If that is AI, then so be it. But given that Kagi's audience is one that explicitly pays to distance themselves from Google's search... I wouldn't be confident in that.
Kagi started out focused on AI technology in 2018. Their AI philosophy is also to create integrations that are opt-in and ostensibly provide some value. I don’t personally feel as though they are...
Kagi started out focused on AI technology in 2018. Their AI philosophy is also to create integrations that are opt-in and ostensibly provide some value. I don’t personally feel as though they are “shoving AI features everywhere” and I think to say as much implies they are chasing trends or adding AI for the sake of having AI in their product. You may not find any value in their AI features which is understandable. I don’t really find much value in them either. But I’ve also never had the feeling that they’ve been shoving them into their main product.
Yikes, I didn’t know that! If you open the Kagi app switcher, 5 of the 7 items in it are AI powered. Assistant, News, Translate, Universal Summarizer, FastGPT. On top of that they have a quick...
Kagi started out focused on AI technology in 2018
Yikes, I didn’t know that!
shoving AI features everywhere
If you open the Kagi app switcher, 5 of the 7 items in it are AI powered. Assistant, News, Translate, Universal Summarizer, FastGPT. On top of that they have a quick answers feature you have to disable. That to me shows a focus on AI over anything else.
Quick answers are enabled by default insofar as your search will prompt a quick answer if it ends in a question mark. Given that most people do not literally type questions into their search...
Quick answers are enabled by default insofar as your search will prompt a quick answer if it ends in a question mark. Given that most people do not literally type questions into their search engine (and also ending it in a question mark) I would not consider this to be an AI feature that is enabled by default the same way that Google’s quick answers is. It’s also very easy to disable if you would in fact like to write your search query in the form of a question.
I read your other comment about wanting to use products that are 100% AI free, so I’ll just concede that Kagi does in fact develop many AI features and if that’s a problem for you then I won’t try and convince you otherwise. I was instead trying to argue against the implied characterization of Kagi that they are chasing trends which I think is obviously false based on their history and their AI philosophy. Perhaps you disagree! Either way I appreciate the discussion.
If the models are running locally, I'm fine with it for certain utilities like accessibility and translation. But, I often find myself in situations where I have to make sense of content from...
If the models are running locally, I'm fine with it for certain utilities like accessibility and translation. But, I often find myself in situations where I have to make sense of content from certain languages that traditional approaches butcher. (Being able to run content through AI and spot check with something like google translate is super useful for navigating those situations.)
I don't need or want an AI assistant in my sidebar. Having used them, I think they tend to be awful productivity tools that potentially waste huge amounts of my time. Workflows that I have that involve them are often hit and miss. I never feel confident about what is still inside the context and what it's just "guessing" at, almost no matter the level of "context engineering."
I think Mozilla's position seems perfectly reasonable. AI options for those who want them and not for those who don't. Seems fine to me. I don't have to use features I don't want. I already don't use lots of features of Firefox.
I am not particularly interested in AI in my browser but I know plenty of people who use it regularly for various things and would like some browser integration. Why should Firefox only cater to me and not them?
I skimmed some comments (here), and I think the common sentiment is that those people (commenting) are upset that Firefox is spending time, energy, money on AI-related anything, when they could be working on other issues or features that are more important to them. Also: the assumption among them is that most Firefox users don't want AI, and so, in adding AI-related stuff, they might be repelling and squandering what little browser market share they have.
What a lot of people in the forum thread seemed to think is that Mozilla developing this feature is taking up human time and effort that could be better spent on making Firefox better. That they're trend-chasing instead of building in better privacy features, for example, that would differentiate them from all the Chromium browsers. And I think I agree; if only a small percentage of Firefox users would be interested, surely they already have their own preferred tools they use instead of whatever gets shoehorned into Firefox?
I could say the same for any of the features J Random Commenter would prefer Mozilla spent time on though. Without access to Mozilla's metrics and user testing results it's impossible to guess at what "Firefox users" want. There are around 90 million people in that group, after all.
Take me, for example - I've been using Firefox from before it was even called Firefox - I don't care about AI, I also don't really care about privacy either. I want a fast, stable browser with good support for modern web standards and decent cross-device sync. Firefox already does that well enough for me, so I'm not bothered about them spending time on things I'm not currently interested in. If those other features help bring more people over to Firefox, great!
I also imagine, as someone who messed about with Firefox's "AI integration," that it didn't take much time to implement. My complaint is that the feature actually seems kinda half-baked or without the ability to change how it's implemented in any real way. The AI slideout window isn't persistent enough so you have to continually log in to your chosen AI service. It's a separate window/instance so the magic login links from email don't work correctly. Every time you highlight something a dumb AI logo pops up, blocking the right-click context menu. Click-and-hold to generate an AI overview isn't terrible until you have to click and hold something that you don't want an AI overview for.
I imagine it took relatively little time to implement the feature and I feel like it shows in the poor implementation.
Their track record for those who followed their decisions for the last decade don't strike confidence, though. It's pretty clear "their numbers" aren't working either. Something needs to change.
Firefox's market share (and everyone else's) has been pretty flat for the last five years which isn't too bad in a field which is both dominated by Chrome and also full of forks and new products (OK, not 'new', they're all Chromium derivatives) coming along every five minutes. Firefox isn't competing with Chrome because nobody is, but it is competing with Opera and Brave and Vivaldi and Kiwi and and and - and I think they're doing pretty well to just maintain the share they have in that environment.
Google destroyed Mozilla, nobody else - although ironically they also saved them with the Google Search deal. There was nothing the foundation could have done in the face of Google's aggressive marketing and solid engineering behind Chrome. There is no feature they could have added which would have changed that. Especially given they had a far worse product at the time Chrome was eating everything else.
The fact that these days Firefox is technically close to Chrome and in some cases even performs better is actually a major engineering achievement on Mozilla's part and we shouldn't let the assorted feature fluff (or lack thereof) around their excellent core work (Gecko and SpiderMonkey) detract from that.
What do you think should be changed?
Well that's the big issue. If they piss off the people who already left chrome, they will find that those people will look more at Brave, or Ladybird. This isn't some disengaged audience that just chooses what the king of search points them at. It's one who cared enough t make a move to begin with.
In the grand scheme of tech, they aren't the worst, but these little things add up and competitors are getting more competitive.
within a feasilble range, or in an ideal world? here's a read on the latter that basically concudes with "we need a leadship overhaul with proper vision, not 'just copy Google', and to focus on being a lean product that doesn't trend chase for maximum revenue".
I think the realistic scenario is simply to re-commit to the core ideas of firefox and stop making controveries every other month that defy this. Deleting promises to not sell your data when your market line is "we aren't Google" doesn't look good.
Well, they do need to chase revenue. Mozilla exists almost entirely at the whim of Google. That's not great. Being self-supporting would be good. Which means... revenue, which comes from users. They're not going to convert any new users by leaving everything the same. Sure, there's a subset of people like me who don't want lots of stuff and another smaller subset who will huff off to another project if there's a new feature they don't like but they're honestly a tiny minority. Mozilla will know how many uninstalls they get after releasing a certain feature (I bet it's next to zero anyway) What about getting new users? Doing the same (no)thing isn't going to get a different result.
This has been going on for as long as there has been the web (yes, unfortunately I am that old). I remember when javascript was considered a silly trend. CSS too. Who even wants in-browser video support anyway? "What's so important about adding support for x/y/z, I don't want/need it?" has been a constant complaint of a certain subset of users since Netscape. If Mozilla listened to the people complaining about every new thing we'd still be in text-only mode and Firefox's userbase would be counted in the thousands rather than the tens of millions we have today.
They can't not piss off a subset of their users because there is nothing they can do which is acceptable to every single user - including doing nothing. I've been on the development end of this kind of thing and you cannot listen to the "keep everything the same forever" crowd, you have to keep moving forward and honestly, they piss and moan loudly and then they shut up until you announce the next thing which they're sure is going to sink your entire project.
My understanding is that this didn't happen. It was a change of language in a legal document which a small number of people mis-interpreted and then it got incorrectly reported everywhere. This is another issue when it comes to dealing with the very engaged and vocal minority group of users - people often get stuff wrong.
I'm not saying this is what happened but as an example, Mozilla might say "we've adding a context menu option to summarise page content with AI, it literally took one dude half a day of gentle hacking" and some people hear "we're turning your entire browser into an agentic system where all your search history and keyboard input will be emailed to Sam Altman personally" then blog furiously about that and someone else reads it, takes it as fact and before you know it, Nabiha Syed is literally Satan.
I really hope is stays that way and doesn't become where I'm being prodded every other day to "try this new AI thing!" I rejected a dozen times before. That's the real issue.
There's plenty of legitimate uses of AI in a browser, even if they're not for everybody.
Mozilla has been careful to make these features opt-in and targeted, and I think they're doing a great job. Much of the response feels reactive, and not considerate to users other than ourselves.
All your examples have one thing in common: They are not generative GPT/LLMs.
I hate that OpenAI, Anthropic etc basically get to stand next to the more useful applications of the technology and say „Yeah, I‘m with those guys.“
Is the first example not an LLM-based example?
I would think that all examples were generative AI. Fx runs a local NMT model for translation, which may not be a literal transformer but works on the same premise of token generation. Tab grouping is similarly a tiny model they distilled to focus on smaller, more categorical training. Even text descriptions are generative because they produce tokens via their CLIP training.
Essentially, they all work on a core premise of training a model via backpropagation, then running input data through to generate tokens containing relevant context and understanding.
Damn, yes. Somehow I was thinking of only summarization, where other algorithms like e.g. TextRank are less resource intensive.
So „2.5 of the examples“ … sigh.
Translation could also be an LLM problem. It's not the fastest or lightest solution, but it does produce much better results. See Kagi Translate vs Google Translate for example.
I want one, but not a chatbot. I just want an AI that can sort/tag bookmarks and delete/fix broken links. Maybe show me a random one from my "To Read" folder. I've got far too many links I saved intending to go back to and never did.
Same here. I know I would have been better served by saving the HTML/text of articles I wanted to read. Thus avoiding link rot. But I didn't do that. And I also should have categorized my bookmarks better. But I'm 1200 bookmarks in, and I would like some help with the mess I have now.
I've always thought the interface for bookmarks was oddly antiquated. Like it basically hasn't changed in 20 years.
I certainly do not.
However, since Firefox pulled that stunt with suggesting that selling of user data ( they back pedaled ) in a new TOS I have since been using LibreWolf, a privacy-centric fork of Firefox.
If you're referring to the terms and conditions update earlier this year, Mozilla never sold user data, and they were never looking to.
I'm having a hard time imagining what this 'AI window' is supposed to do. I think the existing quick access to LLMs from the sidebar and context menus makes sense even if I don't use it, but what more could you possibly want that would warrant... that? What does it do? Is it functionally a chatbot PWA? Does it... generate the web pages for you? I don't get it.
This is frustrating for sure, it’s so odd seeing companies whose core user base is most likely against AI go after it. Another example is Kagi, they keep shoving AI features everywhere.
Firefox will be easy enough to find an alternative to though.
Kagi is also introducing anti-AI features too, though; they just put out a thing where you can report and deweight AI search results. So they're on both sides of the fence there.
Yeah, it’s a bit confusing their business direction. Personally I like my products 100% AI/LLM free, but I’m sticking with Kagi for now because the alternatives are so much worse.
Shame to hear even Kagi is falling into this. I would hope the benefit of the premium market is precisely that you don't need to trend chase and instead focus on what paying customers want.
If that is AI, then so be it. But given that Kagi's audience is one that explicitly pays to distance themselves from Google's search... I wouldn't be confident in that.
Kagi started out focused on AI technology in 2018. Their AI philosophy is also to create integrations that are opt-in and ostensibly provide some value. I don’t personally feel as though they are “shoving AI features everywhere” and I think to say as much implies they are chasing trends or adding AI for the sake of having AI in their product. You may not find any value in their AI features which is understandable. I don’t really find much value in them either. But I’ve also never had the feeling that they’ve been shoving them into their main product.
Yikes, I didn’t know that!
If you open the Kagi app switcher, 5 of the 7 items in it are AI powered. Assistant, News, Translate, Universal Summarizer, FastGPT. On top of that they have a quick answers feature you have to disable. That to me shows a focus on AI over anything else.
Quick answers are enabled by default insofar as your search will prompt a quick answer if it ends in a question mark. Given that most people do not literally type questions into their search engine (and also ending it in a question mark) I would not consider this to be an AI feature that is enabled by default the same way that Google’s quick answers is. It’s also very easy to disable if you would in fact like to write your search query in the form of a question.
I read your other comment about wanting to use products that are 100% AI free, so I’ll just concede that Kagi does in fact develop many AI features and if that’s a problem for you then I won’t try and convince you otherwise. I was instead trying to argue against the implied characterization of Kagi that they are chasing trends which I think is obviously false based on their history and their AI philosophy. Perhaps you disagree! Either way I appreciate the discussion.
Fair enough on the quick answers! I definitely appreciate the discussion as well!
If the models are running locally, I'm fine with it for certain utilities like accessibility and translation. But, I often find myself in situations where I have to make sense of content from certain languages that traditional approaches butcher. (Being able to run content through AI and spot check with something like google translate is super useful for navigating those situations.)
I don't need or want an AI assistant in my sidebar. Having used them, I think they tend to be awful productivity tools that potentially waste huge amounts of my time. Workflows that I have that involve them are often hit and miss. I never feel confident about what is still inside the context and what it's just "guessing" at, almost no matter the level of "context engineering."
Their CEO disagrees. He wants AI to be shoved up your ass so hard.