About three weeks ago, MozillaFirefox 141 released, in addition to features like Linux memory optimization and built-in unit converters, also brings the controversial AI-enhanced tag group. These groups are powered by a local AI model that identifies relevant tabs and suggests names for them. There's even a "Recommend more tabs for group" button that users can click to get recommendations.
Now, some users have taken to Reddit to complain about high CPU usage when using the feature and express their disappointment with Mozilla adding AI to the browser.
When u/st8ic88 noticed a drastic drop in their machine's CPU usage and battery life, they opened Task Manager and discovered that the "inference" process was the culprit. As the comments point out, this is most likely Firefox's process for handling AI tasks on your device. But this Reddit user isn't happy about it:
I don't want these crappy programs to bloat my browser, kill my CPU, and drain my battery. It makes absolutely no sense, it's not a good feature, and it's a shame on Firefox for jumping on this bandwagon.
The role of the browser is to download and render web pages.
Another user checked the System Process Manager using Conky and confirmed that the "inference" process was a new, resource-intensive process. Killing the process will simply cause Firefox to crash and require a restart.
Nearly three years after the release of ChatGPT, generative AI remains a hot topic, with companies like Microsoft actively pushing Copilot to turn Edge into an AI browser, with features like page summarization and image generation.
For privacy-conscious users, an on-device model might be better than what Chrome offers, and the short-lived experimental Tab Organizer will send data to Google's servers for analysis.
Firefox's implementation is a more private, two-part process that, as mentioned, happens locally. To recommend tabs for a group, it uses an embedding model to analyze page titles and create a numerical "embedding vector" for each title. A clustering algorithm then compares these vectors to find relevant pages.
When suggesting group names, the page title and metadata are fetched from the window and fed into Mozilla's smart tag topic model (T5 based on Google AI) to make suggestions.
Image: Mozilla
Some have pointed out that the surge in CPU usage may be related to Firefox using Microsoft's Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) format to run these native models rather than the supposedly more efficient GGUF adopted by Georgi Gerganov.
Of course, this feature can be useful if you have a lot of tabs open, although there are certainly some users who feel it's "extremely stupid" to let a computer make "simple decisions" for them. Some people prefer tools without AI, so companies like Zed Industries offer a global switch that disables all AI in Zed Editor.
If you're also experiencing CPU spikes and battery drain issues caused by Firefox's new AI features, you can disable them through the browser's advanced settings. Open about:config in a new tab, accept the risk warning, and use the search bar to find the control. To turn off the AI chatbot feature, search for browser.ml.chat.enabled and set it to false. To stop smart tab grouping, search for browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled and set it to false.
You can also hide the chatbot from Settings or the sidebar in Firefox Labs, but it may pop back up after an update.