Mozilla recently launched its most ambitious artificial intelligence project to date: a Firefox extension designed to transform lengthy texts and even videos into more understandable formats.
Orbit by Mozilla is an AI assistant plugin for the Firefox browser, featuring powerful content summarization capabilities while placing a strong emphasis on user privacy. It helps users efficiently extract key information while browsing the web.
Introduction to Orbit by Mozilla
Orbit is an AI assistant plugin developed by Mozilla for the Firefox browser and is currently in beta. It is based on the Mistral LLM (Mistral 7B) model, which is hosted by Mozilla on GCP. Orbit does not require users to create an account, does not store or share personal information, and does not save the content of pages visited or generated summaries. User queries are also not used to train the model.
Additionally, Orbit includes a built-in chatbot that can answer questions based on the current page's content, but it does not support queries unrelated to the page.
Mozilla explains that Orbit aims to help users quickly and securely extract important information without relying on cloud-based, always-online AI models.
Features of Orbit by Mozilla
- Multi-content summarization: Summarizes various types of content, including web pages, emails, documents, articles, and videos, helping users quickly grasp core points and save reading time.
- Quick Q&A: Users can ask questions about the current web page content to quickly find specific information, with an interface similar to a chatbot for easy operation.
- Customizable settings: Users can choose their preferred summary length and format, such as bullet points, paragraphs, or short sentences, catering to different reading habits.
- Smart recommendations: Provides suggestions for effective questioning, helping users learn to ask more precise questions, thereby improving work and study efficiency.
- Multi-platform usage: Available on multiple mainstream sites like Gmail, Wikipedia, NY Times, YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitch, covering common information retrieval scenarios.
- Convenient interaction: After installation, a draggable, minimizable, or hideable circular button appears on the page, allowing easy access to summary, Q&A, and other functions via a sidebar, without disrupting normal browsing.
- Privacy protection: Effectively safeguards user privacy, does not collect or store user data, and does not share user query information with the model provider, ensuring peace of mind for users.
Applicable Scenarios
- Work scenarios: Professionals can quickly extract key content from numerous work emails, such as meeting schedules, project updates, and work requirements, using Orbit.
- Learning scenarios: Students conducting research can use Orbit to extract core viewpoints and research conclusions from a plethora of academic articles, improving study efficiency.
- News browsing: When browsing news websites, users can quickly grasp the main points of various news events without spending excessive time reading lengthy reports word by word.
- Video watching: While watching lengthy educational videos, lecture videos, or interview videos, users can preview the core content through summaries generated by Orbit to decide whether to watch the full video.
- Paper reading: Researchers reading professional papers can quickly find the research methods, main findings, and innovations of the papers, grasping the overall context.
How to Use Orbit by Mozilla
- Visit the official website of Orbit by Mozilla (https://orbitbymozilla.com/).
- Find and click the "Add to Firefox - it's free" button on the page to add the plugin to the Firefox browser.
- After installation, find and click the Orbit icon in the browser's extension bar.
- A floating circular Orbit button will appear on the page; hovering over this button will reveal options such as "Summarize," "Ask Orbit," and "Settings."
- If you select "Summarize the page," Orbit will automatically summarize the content of the current web page.
- If you select "Ask Orbit," enter a specific question in the pop-up input box, and Orbit will provide answers related to the current web page.
- Adjust the summary length and format according to personal needs through the "Settings" option to achieve the best reading experience.
- After use, simply close the Orbit window; the plugin will not save any user information.
Conclusion
As an AI assistant plugin for the Firefox browser, Orbit by Mozilla provides great convenience for users in information retrieval and processing with its powerful multi-content summarization, quick Q&A features, and high privacy protection. Whether busy professionals, eager learners, or casual internet users, everyone can benefit from it.
We hope everyone will like and share their experiences and comments after trying it out. We also look forward to Orbit by Mozilla continually developing and improving in the future, bringing users more quality services and innovative features, and continuing to play an important role in the field of information retrieval.
