🧊 Hidden Firefox AI process consuming CPU resources?
Firefox browser users have encountered serious performance issues after the release of version 141. Initially, suspicion fell on the new "Smart Tab Grouping" feature using AI, but an official Mozilla investigation (Bug 1982278) showed that the abnormally high CPU load is caused by another component, namely the hidden pilot experiment "Semantic Search in History" (places.semanticHistory). The "Smart Tab Grouping" has nothing to do with this.
Everything was fine just yesterday. Today I opened Firefox, and as a result, there were sharp spikes in CPU load and power consumption. My fans shouldn't be this loud if I don't have more than 15 tabs open.
After unsuccessfully restarting Firefox, I opened the task manager and found that a process called "Inference" fluctuates from 0.05% to 130% CPU usage, which explains the spikes in CPU load and power consumption.
Killing the process solves the fluctuation problem but causes Firefox to crash, requiring a restart.
What is going on? This problem never existed until today.
— users complain on Reddit.
😱 Official Mozilla representatives have acknowledged the issue. The fix will be included in Firefox 143 (ctodea writes Target Milestone: → 143 Branch).
💡For full control and disabling of all local AI services, advanced users should experiment with some settings:
In about:config the parameter browser.ml.enable is set to false.
*The browser.ml.enable parameter is the main, kind of master key to all under-the-hood machine learning in Firefox. Setting this value to false completely deactivates the local AI engine (Inference process), making it impossible for any dependent features to work, including smart tab groups and the chatbot.
In about:config the parameter browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled is set to false.
*Disables only the smart tab grouping feature. This step is not a guaranteed solution to the CPU overload problem, as the main source of the error lies in another component. Meanwhile, the AI engine itself (Inference process) remains active for other potential tasks.
In about:config the parameter browser.ml.chat.enabled is set to false.
*The browser.ml.chat.enabled parameter is a direct system switch that controls the activation and visibility of the AI chat integrated into Firefox.
Source: Telegram | Russian OSINT
