- Firefox 139 has added an AI-powered link preview feature
- This summarizes web pages without you needing to click a link
- Like all AI generation, it needs time to think – which can be a pain
With artificial intelligence (AI) all the rage these days, it’s not uncommon to find your favorite web browser has added a bunch of AI features designed to change the way you surf the internet. Firefox is no exception: as explained in the release notes of its latest version 139 update, the browser has brought AI-powered link previews to its users.
Once the experimental feature is enabled, you can activate it by hovering your mouse pointer over a link and pressing Alt+Shift. This fires up a preview box that summarizes key info about the web page so that you can see what it’s about without needing to visit.
On first glance, I love this idea. Imagine you land on a web page and you’re not sure if you can trust its embedded links. Or you’re super busy and just want to know if it’s worth clicking through to a linked page. With an AI link preview, you can get artificial intelligence to do the work for you.
Firefox’s AI comes into play by showing a set of key points that sum up the main ideas of the linked page, helping you to understand it before you click through. But although that initially sounds great, I’m not totally convinced just yet.
A good idea with an annoying flaw
I’ve been a loyal Firefox user for 20 years now, and I’ve seen it change a huge amount in that time. And with the rise of AI, I shouldn’t be surprised that developer Mozilla has been leaning into machine learning features in recent years.
While link previews feel like a good idea on the surface – for one thing, they let you check if a link is actually what it claims to be without having to click and find out – they suffer from a common AI problem: you have to wait for them to be generated. It’s the same with tools like ChatGPT, where you need to wait for the AI to think up a response. Firefox’s link previews are not instant, and when I tried them out, I found they ended up slowing down my browsing experience.
Still, they have to be activated with a specific keyboard shortcut, which means they won’t appear when you simply hover over a link, minimizing the risk of accidental activations. That’s good, since a slow-generating box that obscures the text you’re trying to read would quickly get annoying. As it is, you can activate the previews if you want, or totally ignore them if you don’t.
This is far from the only AI tool that Firefox has added over the last year or so. You can now add an AI chatbot to your sidebar, use AI to overhaul your tab groups, and more. And while link previews help it keep up with the current tech zeitgeist, I’m not sure it’s a feature I’ll be using a whole lot right now.
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alexblake.techradar@gmail.com (Alex Blake)
