Orbit by Mozilla is a browser extension that brings AI-functionality to Firefox. It was announced in September 2024 and is currently available as a beta.
Orbit supports a few options right now, but there are also limitations. As far as these are concerned, it is available only for pages in English at the time of writing.
Main features include:
- Getting a quick summary of a webpage’s or a video’s content.
- Interact with the AI in a chat-like interface.
What about privacy?
Mozilla says that Orbit does not use user data for training. It is based on Mistral 7B, which is one of the top small large language models out there.
The service does not require an account, which is good for privacy. Downside is that prompts are lost when you navigate away from a page.
Mozilla states in the privacy policy that is is getting information when the service is used.
We receive basic telemetry data by default, which we use to improve the performance, stability, and security of the Service, including information about your device, including hardware configuration and device operating system; browser information, such as browser type and settings; log files and usage data; and event information, such as errors or crashes. We may also receive additional information about your device, such as country, language, operator and OEM, which we use to prevent fraud and abuse, enforce our terms, and improve the security of the Service.
Orbit uses third-party services and shares some information with those. It uses the Google Cloud Platform as well as Sentry for application performance monitoring.
Using Orbit
First thing you do is install Orbit in Firefox. You get a privacy prompt after installation. Here you select whether you want basic telemetry to be shared only or more.
Once that is out of the way, you see the Orbit icon floating in the right corner of webpages. Hover over the icon to display the available actions. The top two, Summarize and Ask Orbit, are the main actions.
Summarize provides a short summary of webpages, emails, videos, and other content on a specific site. It is designed to return the essence of the page, but it may be too basic, especially on longer pages, emails, or videos.
The ask Orbit option is available as a standalone option and also after summaries. It works like other AI chat tools. Type a query and wait for the AI to respond.
The option works well with summaries. Start with a summary and then ask Orbit for additional details.
I tried this on several videos, and it worked really well (using transcripts). Orbit answers follow-up questions that you may have, and it worked surprisingly well in tests.
You may also chat directly with Orbit. Chats are limited to content on the active webpage. This limits Orbit.
Closing Words
Orbit, all in all, is an interesting helper extension. While it shares issues with every other AI-tool out there, mainly hallucinations, it is designed to help users make sense of content that they see in front of them.
It worked well with videos, especially with follow-up questions. Still, it may be necessary to verify the information that the AI provides, especially if it is critical.
Have you tried AI tools in recent time? If so, which is your favorite and why?
I personally don’t use any AI tools on a regular basis, would never when registration is required nor within a browser extension.
I do exceptionally call upon DuckDuckGo’s AI Chat to find a summarized answer to queries which lead to different and sometimes incompatible answers in a traditional Web search.
For instance I was puzzled by the truth about a Firefox setting called ‘dom.ipc.processCount’ and found no substantial information about it on the Web. I went over to DDG AI Chat and here is our dialog copy/pasted which brought insights about the pref which helped me better understand :
https://paste.i2pd.xyz/?eff2101016400293#J7fkiv5zwyjZSPSU8d6CfAp1Jg3jiC54dJmTQhwRe5WP
So that’s about it, I mean AI assistance when and if I need it, but certainly not as an everyday companion/intruder.
Based on information I can gather on Orbit AI, it is not a default part of FireFox, and needs to be installed separately. This is the way all AI should be added to applications, software, and operating systems. The ability to limit the data the AI harvests is also a step in the right direction. My hope is that this data harvesting can be completely turned off.
Still not good enough. Even as an extension that is constantly on, it scans and tracks every page you visit. A better way to use AI is to open AI in webpage through bookmark and paste address of page that you want to analyze there.
Constant AI assistant: no, thanks. I am not brain-dead yet.
About using AI:
I use grammar correction extension (AI Grammar Checker), which supposedly AI based. It is so so. From my posts, you could still figure you that English is not my native language. And there are still a ton of mistakes.
From general AI, I prefer VeniceChat and iAsk just because they are less nerfed. Still, I would not trust them or any AI on up-to-date data because their scrapped databases always outdated (from few month to few years)
And I tried to run on of smaller AI models on my PC without Internet Access. Let’s just say it ate 99% of computer resources and luckily could be stopped. I will not try it again.