In mid-2024, Mozilla began experimenting with some artificial intelligence in its web browser. Did In the Nightly version, in its Firefox Labs, from where we could activate a function to be assisted by ChatGPT and other models. At the end of the same year, the company that develops the red panda browser also launched an extension for it, called orbit.
The extension is official and has been developed by Mozilla. It is only available on the Firefox extensions website, more specifically on this link. Once installed, a floating icon will appear on all web pages, as long as it is not disabled, which will We can ask him to summarize a web page or ask him something about its content.
Orbit can also handle videos
If summarizing or asking questions about the content of a website is not enough for you, you should know that Orbit does not stop there. You can do the same with videos. So you found a 10-minute tutorial and just want an answer? Ask Orbit to summarize it for you.
The videos are perhaps the most interesting thing for a person like me, who seems to be an endangered species and still prefers texts to videos these days. I have my reasons. For example, in a text you can jump from paragraph to paragraph until you find what you are looking for, and if there is an explanation in a list, you can read that and that's it. In a video, if you don't want to miss what you are most interested in, you have to swallow it. That is if you don't use Orbit.
All private, as always
Orbit's website muestra a lot of information that he gives me in the nose that has been done on purpose so that we use the extension on it. I have tried it, and when I asked him to summarize it for me he explained:
«This email expresses a sarcastic perspective on the advancements and implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI), using exaggeration to highlight its complexities and potential drawbacks. The author mocks AI's ability to complicate tasks, its predictive capabilities, and the replacement of human interaction by AI chatbots. They also mock the idea of ​​AI-generated content and its ability to replicate human creativity, as well as the potential ethical issues of relying on AI for decision-making.
The tone is light-hearted and humorous, but the message raises valid concerns about the role and impact of AI in our lives. Orbit is a Firefox add-on that uses AI to summarize and answer queries about web content, including emails and articles. It doesn’t require creating an account or saving session data, and it works across multiple websites.
The current version uses a Mozilla-hosted Mistral LLM, and the content is not shared beyond temporarily caching it to process queries and return results. Orbital summaries are only available on the current page and are cleared when the user navigates away. The service makes no pronouncement on which model to use and constantly compares the latest open source models. The trade-off for not sharing user data with the model is that the service cannot influence or train it.«.
Orbit, by Orbit
In short, that's all Orbit can do as explained by Orbit. The funny thing is that being on Christmas vacation and all that entails, I hadn't gotten part of the meaning of his website, not consciously, and The above text has helped me both to understand it and to complete this article..
Better or worse than what is there as an experiment?
What we were presented with in mid-2024 is certainly useful. Is Orbit better or worse? Well, is different. The built-in feature — disabled by default — allows you to summarize a web page, explain what you've selected, or answer a question, while Orbit can do something similar with videos as well. The question here is whether you trust ChatGPT and other models more, whether you prefer the extension or the built-in feature, and whether you care about privacy. In addition, Orbit is currently it's only in english.
From my point of view and for these purposes, I think Orbit is better.