Mozilla Corp. rolled out updates today to its popular Firefox browser, updating an artificial intelligence assistant called Smart Window, currently in beta, that lets users check answers, summarize open tabs and retrace search history.

Smart Window is the evolution of an earlier concept introduced by the company last November, called AI Window, which explored how privacy-first AI could integrate with the browsing experience. The company has been building and testing Smart Window with the community for the past few months and is adding new features that allow users to check answers without losing their place while exploring topics, doing research and hopping between tabs to figure out what they’ve been doing.

“The browser already has much of the context around what you’re trying to do — the research in your tabs, the pages you’ve visited, the things you’ve found along the way,” said Head of Firefox Ajit Varma. “With Smart Window, we’re exploring how to make more of that context useful while keeping you in control.”

Picking up where you left off

We’ve all been there: We’re looking to purchase a new computer, peripheral or other component but we don’t know exactly which one is best, and there are a multitude of options. Things get worse when there are a lot of different brands, options and build opinions. Eventually, there’s a single browser open with at least a dozen tabs open. 

You walk away for lunch, and you come back to a mess of different shops open with various components open, review sites that you’ve forgotten, the sites you thought felt authoritative, which store had the best prices – or even the best deals. Sometimes you simply give up, try to pick something that looks good and click buy.

What if you closed a few tabs along the way, or you remember seeing some product reviews from months ago that you want to find again – but you just don’t remember the right keywords to find them again? Searching Google isn’t always easy. 

Smart Window makes that easy. It’s aware of your current tab context: your search for components, all the review sites you have open, the fact that you looked into this research subject three months ago, all safely and privately within your own browser.

Mozilla said it has partnered with Exa Labs Inc., an AI search company, to build relevant search results rapidly without taking you to a new tab. It will also quickly show you relevant tabs when you’re asking questions, providing you with everything you need in the chat to understand where you were and to pick up from what you were doing – after all, lunch shouldn’t break your concentration.

The company said Smart Window is still evolving. Soon, the feature will be able to learn from recent browsing journeys and pull together related browser tabs and history to give users a better foundation to return to what they were working on. This way, it will simply display options for questions when it’s opened, so users don’t have to type the same thing over and over.

Smart Window will remain in beta mode for the time being while the company continues to improve it. It’s available in English for users in the United States and Canada.

Image: Mozilla