Whether we like it or not, the major web browser players have been actively adding AI features over the past year, and Mozilla fully participates in this trend.
Their latest Nightly builds, Mozilla’s cutting-edge testing ground that allows developers and early adopters to test new features before they are polished and released to the broader public, include several new AI capabilities. Here’s what it’s all about.
In recent developments, Firefox Nightly has begun small-scale testing of an AI-powered accessibility feature to generate alt-text for images within PDFs directly on the user’s device. This ensures privacy by keeping data local and is a step forward in making web content more accessible to visually impaired users.
In addition, however, yesterday Mozilla announced that they will introduce an opt-in experimental feature this week in Firefox’s Nightly releases, integrating several leading AI servicesโincluding ChatGPT, Google Gemini, HuggingChat, and Le Chat Mistralโdirectly into the Firefox sidebar.
This feature promises to enhance productivity by allowing users to access AI-driven summaries, language simplification, and knowledge testing without toggling between tabs or apps.
According to Mozilla, the selection of AI services available in Firefox Nightly is carefully curated, considering each service’s ongoing development and unique capabilities. Mozilla emphasizes the importance of choice, enabling users to select the AI tool that best fits their needs rather than being restricted to a single provider.
If you’re excited to try out the new feature, you can start by downloading the Nightly builds from this link. After that, go to “Preferences,” select “Nightly Experiments,” and enable the “AI Chatbot Integration” option.
For more information, refer to the official announcement from Mozilla.
