Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.

@firefoxwebdevs Like many others, I have a metric ton of thoughts on this topic. I might even try writing something to consolidate them.

In the meantime: I don't consider the translation models to be part of the major AI hype I loathe so much. Machine translation of language has been happening for a long time and has proven largely useful, and it lacks the stink of desperation which so many of the generative applications of recent times carry.

While I'm already thinking about it: even the name "AI kill switch" feels bad to think about. I know that "AI" is the buzzword that gets upper management giddy and which the untrained public is now used to hearing, but the fact of the matter is that if you can't "sell" a feature without appealing to buzzwords, your feature wasn't worth the time and effort put into it.

@eckes for that usage pattern the results would probably be even worse with more fabrications. So what are we even doing here?

@mdavis I believe it's a moral stance due to how the models were produced.

@angelfeast @twifkak No, I don't think so. It says this (with a takedown compliance process posted afterward)...

License

These data are released under this licensing scheme: PD

We do not own any of the text from which these data has been extracted.
We license the actual packaging of these parallel data under the Creative Commons CC0 license ("no rights reserved").

@firefoxwebdevs Hookay… then this is less about a local feature or data sharing and more about an overall “Made with AI” concern where nothing related to AI *at*all*ever* taints the user’s browser, in or out. In that case, if the user turns on the AI kill switch, it should totally kill anything having to do with AI for those who take that position.

That’s an issue with these polls — too much undisclosed nuance to be able to answer properly.

@firefoxwebdevs I can only speak for myself of course, but I'm someone who is strongly opposed to sneaky approaches, like hiding things in submenus or requiring people to go back later to disable new things, for example. And I'm also strongly opposed to basically everything in the current generation of "AI" (LLMs, GenAI, etc.) - but personally I wouldn't consider this sneaky, as it's immediately visible that there's a second choice to make, at the exact moment you disable "AI".

Of course if that stops being the case and the second option gets hidden behind an "Advanced..." button or foldout for example, it would be sneaky. But in the way it's shown in my mockup, I would consider it fine as it's both proactively presented and immediately actionable.

(I do still think that exploitative "AI" things should be opt-in rather than opt-out, but it doesn't seem like that's within the scope of options that will be considered by Mozilla, so I'm reasoning within the assumption of an opt-out mechanism here)

Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.

They're not LLMs. They're trained on open data.

Should translation be disabled if the AI 'kill switch' is active?

@zzt I posted this poll after a meeting where we discussed the design of the kill switch, and there was uncertainty around translations. I want to make sure the community's voice is represented in these discussions.

@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social I believe it'd be better if Firefox stopped referring to unwanted slop like chatbots with meaningless marketing terms such as 'AI' instead

@firefoxwebdevs But wait… what if the developers used AI to help develop the code in the browser itself? Does that mean AI kill switch purists should then rather not even use the product at all?

@tasket @angelfeast https://paracrawl.eu/moredata says "This is a release of text from Internet Archive.... The project also used CommonCrawl which is already public." Those crawls quite famously/infamously include copyrighted content. I don't see anything to suggest they filtered those datasets for public domain annotations. (Not that such an annotation would be enforceable, but it would at least be an indication of intent.)

@firefoxwebdevs I don't care. Local translation in FF is on the level of free early 2000s web translators. So maybe just remove it and add it again, when it's production ready

@m0rpk @firefoxwebdevs quite honestly, you're off the mark, **a lot**.
A browser with a built-in translator is a door opener for the open web for so many people that don't read English well enough to benefit from the dominant corpus of technological, cultural and scientific websites.
Firefox could indeed remove that functionality and instead of letting people translate websites on their phone make them use the google translate app that directly. Congrats on how you've advocated for the open web.

@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social I believe it'd be better if Firefox stopped referring to unwanted slop like chatbots with meaningless marketing terms such as 'AI' instead

Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.

They're not LLMs. They're trained on open data.

Should translation be disabled if the AI 'kill switch' is active?

Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.

They're not LLMs. They're trained on open data.

Should translation be disabled if the AI 'kill switch' is active?

@funkylab Mozilla only have to make that functionality possible to add via a plugin for people who want it. That way user choice, accessible web translation, and separation between core and optional browser functions and are all satisfied.

There is nothing to say Mozilla have to deliver that plugin - and nothing to stop them from doing so either. Or anyone else.

I'd argue that's how the open web should work. Not mandating optional behaviour within the browser itself.

@firefoxwebdevs

@mdavis it's definitely a complicated topic! I guess it's down to us to figure out a model that best serves most people, while providing options to cover the rest.

@flxtr @firefoxwebdevs as someone who used these in the early 2000s: no, it's not. It's not as good as DeepL, but it's worlds ahead of machine translation in the 2000s.

@m0rpk @firefoxwebdevs mozilla did deliver this as a plugin in the beginning. What's your point? "Don't make the web open, unless it's something that I approve?"