Tag: web

Firefox soon to let you block AI features

You can soon turn off AI features in Firefox, through all future updates. (Picture: Mozilla)
Mozilla, the makers of the open source browser, are introducing both overall and granular control over the AI features of the browser.

— AI is changing the web, and people want very different things from it. We’ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI. We’ve also heard from others who want AI tools that are genuinely useful, they write on their blog.

That doesn’t mean they won’t follow the rest of the world in rolling out ever bigger AI features, though — because they will. They are just offering an off-ramp for people who don’t like it.

The AI toggle in settings will be permanent, and move through future updates, so it won’t be borked sometime in the future.

Currently, Firefox uses AI for translations, alt-text in PDFs, enhanced tab grouping, link previews, and an AI assistant sidebar, which works across a whole host of providers. You will be able to turn these off indiviually, or toggle the whole thing off.

The feature will debut in Firefox 148, which rolls out on February 24.

Read more: Mozilla’s announcement, Mashable, Engadget, MacRumors.

Google linking AI Overviews with AI Mode, further worrying web publishers

Transitioning seamlessly from Overviews to AI Mode instead of websites, Google is keeping more users on its own pages.
Google will send you to AI Mode instead of to websites. (Picture: Screenshot)
Rolling out globally on mobile as of Monday, Google is giving its AI Overviews a little extra depth.

The idea is that sometimes the user is satisfied with a quick overview as an answer to a query, but sometimes it brings up more questions and requires a little more digging.

Therefore, the AI Overview now sometimes comes with an input field for AI Mode at the bottom of the screen, which will be able to give more comprehensive answers – rather than sending you to a website.

— It’s one seamless experience: a quick snapshot when you need it, and deeper conversation when you want it, says Vice President of Product for Google Search, Robby Stein, on x.com:

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Weekend roundup: Sora 2 after 2 days, Comet is free and Disney on copyrights

Copyrights holders are urged to opt out of Sora 2 use, but there seems no easy way to do it.
SpongeBob is a popular character for Sora 2 users. One can wonder for how long. (Picture: screenshot)

Sora 2 spews copyrighted materials all over
After a couple of days in the wild, OpenAIs new video generator spews nazi SpongeBobs, stealing Picachus and just about everything you can imagine from Darth Vader to Mickey Mouse and other protected IPs. Apparently, OpenAI has been in talks with movie studios urging them to opt out if they disagree with their IP use. Disney did just that, but it hasn’t helped much, it seems.
More at: 404 media, Gizmodo, Axios.

UPDATE: You can get Sora 2 invite codes here, on a pay if forward-basis, if you just promise to leave some codes back where you got them. [Turns out they are empty. You could maybe try again later.]

Perplexity frees the Comet browser
Their AI agentic browser was previously only available for those who paid for a $200 monthly membership, and amassed a 2 million person queue for downloads. Now Perplexity is making it free. You can also subscribe for $5 per month to select media sources that will get paid for inclusion in the results. The browser can summarize Slack chats, get directions from maps, and even pull specific points in YouTube videos for you. It should also be better at distinguishing AI slop from genuine, human made content. You can download it here.
More at: Business Insider, Engadget.

Read on for more!

Continue reading “Weekend roundup: Sora 2 after 2 days, Comet is free and Disney on copyrights”

Anthropic slips out Claude for Chrome, warns against prompt injection hacks

Using an AI agent in your browser is far from simple, or safe.
Hidden text can hijack your browser agent to do dangerous things, Anthropic cautions. (Picture: Anthropic)
While it might seem great out the box to have an AI agent interact with web pages for you, insidious prompts might be lurking in web pages and emails.

Claude for Chrome is «the next logical step,» writes Anthropic, after connecting Claude to calendars, documents and emails.

— We view browser-using AI as inevitable, they go on, and cite the large portion of work being done in the browser interface.

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Cloudflare to block AI crawlers by default, charge micropayments

Cloudflare, the world's largest Content Delivery Network, blocks AI bots as of today
They are calling it Content Independence Day — and talk of taking the content back from the bots. (Picture: Cloudflare)
Wading into the ongoing battle between web publishers and AI chatbots, the infrastructure giant that serves up 15-20% of the web is setting up some new rules.

Starting Tuesday, all new accounts on the content caching service will block AI bots — the crawlers that scrape a website’s content for AIs — by default.

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Microsoft NLWeb tools offer easy AI search for any website

NLWeb is touted as a revolution, but it's catching on just yet.
NLWeb will turn search queries into chatbots, but uptake is not revolutionary, just yet. (Picture: Microsoft)
According to Microsoft, it’s the biggest thing on the web since HTML, leveraging easy code to include on websites and turning them into an AI chatbot app.

This should let websites easily tune into the revolution of AI search, allowing for natural language processing right from the search bar, says Microsoft.

Natural language process as revolution
This is fourth revolution in computers, says Ramanathan V. Guha, a technical fellow at Microsoft, — being able to communicate with applications, and computers in general, with free-form language, to The Verge.

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