Imagine a world of “Spotify Wrapped,” but for your browser.
In an effort to create an add-on for Mozilla Firefox, that’s what local resident and recent California State University, Monterey Bay graduate, Taimur Hasan, did.
“As a part of the graduation requirement, you have to do a capstone — they partner you up with some organization or project. The one I selected to be with was Firefox. My mentor encouraged me to use AI models that run on devices. I was trying to bring that cutting-edge technology into a small version that can run in everyone’s device,” Hasan said.
With that, Hasan created his add-on, called “Fox Recap.”
“It was really a proof of concept to show that this technology has some use [through Firefox]. It’s inspired by ‘Spotify Wrapped.’ It takes your usage history and tries to give you some fun tidbits or facts about how to use your browser,” Hasan said.
Even though the project does use the implementation of artificial intelligence, the goal is for its use to be subtle.
“Mozilla is known for being open source, which means that this is a software that everyone around the world can sort of contribute to, and anyone can make changes, and anyone can sort of help out on it. And that’s kind of what our project was framed as,” Hasan said. “This is a tool that uses AI, but that’s not so much in your face — not so buzzwordy. Because the processing happens locally, users retain control over their data.”
A main and evident concern in creating the add-on was privacy, but Hasan wanted to encourage the notion that data collected could directly serve the user who fully consents to the initiative, rather than data centers.
“So part of the technical constraint was that the approach is more challenging in a privacy-focused browser. And the data collection that does happen is anonymous data,” Hasan said. “This is an add-on, so you have to go out of your way to the Firefox Add-On Store and install it. It’s not a normal add-on — it’s [still] an experimental work-in-progress.”
Calling “Fox Recap” a proof of concept, Hasan is now using his foundational understanding of AI as he works on the company’s smart browser as a full-time employee.
“‘Fox Recap’ was a small project to show what something could look like with real development. It was more like [a proposal] on how a smart browser, or a feature, could look like. And that’s what I’m working on now, which is Firefox Smart Window,” Hasan said. “At least for what Mozilla wants to do, and what I’ve been working on, it’s all for good. I feel pretty good about working for a nonprofit. The AI is meant to be for good use.”
