Firefox Voice, Mozilla's new project to handle Firefox with Voice commands

firefoxvoice

Like many digital players, the Mozilla foundation is interested in voice assistants. For example, he launched the Common Voice project, a set of voice data that allows small businesses to develop their own artificial intelligence and that could reduce GAFAM's dominance over digital assistants.

But at the same time, Mozilla He has also worked in a product that allows you to control your browser with voice commands. And is that since last month Mozilla began to test the add-on firefoxvoice with an experimental voice navigation system which allows you to use voice commands to perform typical browser actions.

About Firefox Voice

firefoxvoice works as a smart screen voice assistant within the browser as an extension.

Once installed, the user can ask to complement to open websites, switch to another tab, take a screenshot of the page and more.

Another example of its use is that, if the user is on a media site, you can use commands like 'Play', 'Pause' and 'Mute'. TOFurthermore, it can perform a wide range of browser tasks, such as assign shortcuts to long command, read aloud, mute tab.

Firefox Voice is a Mozilla experiment that lets you navigate and do more with your voice, faster than ever. We are looking for the brave first users who are willing to give the new plugin a try and give us feedback before the main public launch.

In addition, Firefox Voice can be started by clicking the add button or using the keyboard shortcut. Firefox Voice also understands natural language. Therefore, it is not only connected to specific commands.

Unlike a smart speaker, it does not have a wake word, at least not yet and it is activated by clicking on the icon in the address bar. The tool is limited to the desktop version of the browser and only works in English.

Firefox Voice is based on Google Cloud Speech Service (Google Cloud Voice Service), but Mozilla's servers are defined in the plugin code (settings can be redefined during compilation).

The privacy policy file mentions the ability to send voice data to Mozilla and Google Cloud Speech, so in theory you can understand everything that Google has added to their platform.

That too means that all voice commands are routed through Google servers, but it does not contain any record of what it processes, according to Mozilla. By default, Mozilla doesn't stick to recordings either, though users can opt for a program where the audio will be used to enhance Firefox Voice.

The proposed addition of Firefox Voice differs from typical voice control systems in that it does not focus on replacing the mouse and keyboard when manipulating the interface, but instead is positioned as an auxiliary tool to process questions in a natural language, acting as a voice assistant.

For example, a user can send commands such as "how is the weather", "find a tab with Gmail", "turn off the sound", "save as PDF", "zoom in", "open Mozilla website".

How to test Firefox Voice?

Finally, if you want to try Firefox Voice and evaluate the functionality for yourself, nothing could be simpler, you just have to open your Firefox browser and go to the extensions page to search for the plugin.

After installing the plugin, user is invited to grant the right to collect and analyze voice templates with its transfer to Mozilla servers to increase the accuracy of the service (the data is collected anonymously and is not transmitted to third parties). Or, on the other hand, send telemetry with voice data (it is optional and can be rejected).

In the same way, you can contribute to the project by validating audios or sending from the following link. 


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  1.   daniel said

    Interesting, I'm going to give it a try to see how it goes. Greetings very good article.

  2.   Claudia Segovia said

    I am subscribed to Mozilla news, so I already have it installed. The questions they propose are going very well. From the beginning I granted them the compilation rights, because I support what that foundation does. I've tried other questions in English, and some work, and some don't. And since I speak Spanish, I also make inquiries in Spanish, knowing that it still only works in English, so that those who work on the project know that we are also non-English speakers who are interested. Some work, the same. Few, but they work. It also happens with other languages. I asked him, in German (Google Translate via) to take me to the Deustche Welle site, and he did. Excellent idea. I am concerned about the intermediation of Google, but I still support it.