Mozilla, the company behind the popular Firefox browser, is launching a new startup called Mozilla.ai. The goal of the new venture is to create a trustworthy and open-source ecosystem for artificial intelligence (AI). Moez Draief, a seasoned AI researcher, is leading the startup, and Mozilla is putting $30 million into the effort to get it off the ground. As AI-powered products like chatbots and image generators gain in popularity, they’re also raising concerns about misinformation, deepfakes, and copyright issues. Mozilla has been studying the problem and released a white paper on “Creating Trustworthy AI” in 2020. However, now the company is taking a more proactive approach by launching its own AI startup to influence the industry through product development, rather than just policy advocacy. The ultimate goal is to create a more responsible and ethical AI ecosystem.
Mozilla’s announcement of its new startup, Mozilla.ai, is in line with the company’s approach of being a small yet influential player in the market, as it has been with Firefox. Although Firefox is no longer the most popular web browser, Mozilla’s deep understanding and care for the web give it a strong voice in industry conversations. The company’s roots in Netscape give it extensive knowledge of the consumer web, making it a credible voice in discussions. While the details of Mozilla.ai’s plans are still vague, it seems the company will prioritize building safety and transparency tools for developers rather than trying to compete with GPT-4. The website suggests that the focus will be on creating an open-source AI ecosystem that is trustworthy.
The timing of this statement is also intriguing. The fact that Bard and Bing are owned and run by two of the biggest tech firms indicates that both of them have a stake in keeping their experience private. Even OpenAI, which has long vowed to be the kind of open ecosystem Mozilla is referring to, has started to divulge much less data regarding its models and training sets. Mozilla appears to believe that it may be the only business capable of leading the charge for a better approach to creating AI.
