Exploring on-device AI link previews in Firefox

a year ago

Firefox Labs 138 introduces an optional experimental feature for link previews to enhance browsing experience.
Link Preview activation: hover over a link and press Shift + Alt (Option on macOS) to see a card with title, description, image, reading time, and 3 key points.
The preview card appears in a separate panel, positioned near the cursor, reinforcing it's from Firefox and not the page.
Initial implementation uses credentialless HTTPS requests to fetch page HTML without executing scripts, sending a custom x-firefox-ai header.
Metadata like Open Graph tags and Firefox’s Reader View capabilities are used to extract title, description, image, reading time, and key points.
Key points are generated on-device using wllama (WebAssembly llama.cpp) with SmolLM2-360M from HuggingFace for privacy.
Performance: first key point appears within 4 seconds, with subsequent points within a second.
Optimizations include pre-downloading the AI model (369MB) and limiting content provided to the model.
Future improvements focus on multiple languages, key points quality, and bringing the feature to Android.
Feedback is encouraged via AI@Mozilla discord #firefox-ai.

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