The one "AI" feature that genuinely helps the user and preserves privacy is the Translation feature. (Yes, machine translation is in fact AI)

translation is moreso machine learning, not generative hallucinations or a chatbot

it's literally the same technology as LLMs. Transformers were proposed for translation.

(But I don't know what methods the Firefox translation uses. I assume it's a local model but don't even know that for sure.)

It is a local model: https://mozilla.github.io/translations/

Pointy haired bosses heard about AI, and now you have AI everywhere.. you know, just in case, if you wanted an AI chatbot in your image resizing software or your pdf reader. Before that it was "cloud", where every app had to have a cloud-something, even if it didnd't need one.

Don't forget when everyone was adding "blockchain" to their apps, regardless of what that did or meant.

In theory, there shouldn't be pointy-haired bosses doing anything with Firefox. That's the entire point. Cathedral vs. bazaar and whatnot.

- Creating alternate sources of revenue.

- Chrome and Edge are going to do it as well sooner or later, and Mozilla's modus operandi has been to largely copy feature sets from Chrome to stay relevant.