Not in my browser! Vivaldi capo doubles down on generative AI ban

Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Norway-based browser maker Vivaldi, believes the tech industry's efforts to automate web browsing using generative AI models have gone too far. "Every startup is doing AI, and there is a push for AI inside products and services continuously," he told The Register in a phone interview. "It's not really …

[Pete Sdev]

Good show

Nice to hear that there's someone in charge of something who has more than 1 active braincell.

Currently using Vivaldi right now as it happens, probably the least evil browser for Android devices at this time.

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: Good show

Fennec is better on Android.

[beast666]

Re: Good show

Brave is better on mobile.

And desktop.

[Steve Foster]

Re: Good show

Brave has also jumped onto the AI bandwagon.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Good show

Brave is the highly ethical browser that replaces website ads with its own and has its own kleptocurrency, right?

[Catkin]

Re: Good show

Personally, I use it for YouTube because I find whatever advertising is actually taking place* less intrusive. I find 30s ads every 5 minutes or a minute for a video to load while YouTube fights with ublock to be more bother than having another browser installed on my system.

*I think there was one pop up about their own crypto but, unlike a Microsoft prompt to sign in or a YouTube prompt to show me shorts, when I told it to go away forever, it did

[DJV]

Re: Good show

I'm running uBlock Origin on Firefox and don't see any "inserted" ads whatsoever.

[Catkin]

Re: Good show

That's my primary setup too. It's not so much seeing the ads in FF, it's that each video takes a solid minute to start playing and YouTube pops up a 'helpful' hint that the poor performance might be the fault of my ad blocker. Perhaps they're trying new code but, when it is happening, Brave seems to do just fine, playing immediately.

[Rich 2]

Re: Good show

I long-ago gave up trying to watch YT videos in the browser - ANY browser - the experience is just too frustrating.

Download with yt-dlp and watch on vlc

[JibberX]

Re: Good show

FreeTube on desktop and NewPipe on Android too

(Parabolic on Gnome for the GUI)

[blu3b3rry]

Re: Good show

It'd be nice to hear the reasoning beyond the repeated blather of "use brave it's better" whenever web browsers are mentioned in an article.

Given your posting history however I don't think I'll be holding my breath.

Two legs good, four legs bad.

[segfault188]

Phew

I'm glad that Vivaldi, my main browser on Linux and Android, is holding back from the current trend of stuffing AI/LLM functionality into browsers.

I also use Firefox for some things, and with every version update now I check that the relevant settings (e.g. browser.ml.chat.enabled, browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled) haven't changed from turned off to defaulted on.

[richardcox13]

Re: Phew

This AI choice has provided yet another reason to prefer Vivaldi. As if there wasn't enough already^[1].

^[1] Configurable, tab management (other browsers have now copied some, but not all, of Vivaldi's capabilities), ...

[Anonymous Coward]

“wants users to control their own data”

I had to read that twice.

Bravo!

[MonocleRB]

Good to see Vivaldi getting the attention it deserves

I've been using it on and off for a year or so, just recently got back on it. Enjoying it as a reasonable browser with a lot of niceties like a good screenshot tool on desktop and separate "Open in new tab" and "Open in new background tab" on mobile (believe me, that actually makes browsing on mobile much nicer!), plus the wealth of customization options.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Good to see Vivaldi getting the attention it deserves

Sounds like something I'm going to have to look in to.

[beardman]

Too bad Vivaldi is based on Chromium. Will still use Firefox as its new shit is manageable by disabling it in about:config and it still has one killer feature - multi account containers.

[amj]

Multi-account containers is a killer feature. Use it all the time with Librewolf, and previously FF. It's a tough one to move away from.

[blu3b3rry]

Been happily using Firefox for years, although sadly the recent infestation of AI and subsequent performance hits has dulled my like of it somewhat.

Switched over to Waterfox and like it quite a bit (some of the earlier jankiness seems to have been cleaned up and it's definitely faster than FF). Vivaldi sounds like it'd be worth a whirl for a month or so to see what it's like.

[FF22]

The only reason

The only reason Vivalid is doing this, because they've recognized that if gen AI takes over, then browsers will be useless, and most people will just use the AI apps for everything, instead of actually browing the web.