Mozilla’s anti-AI campaign asks users to choose their future

Mozilla has decided to pick a fight that most of Silicon Valley would rather declare settled. The non-profit tech organisation, widely known for its web browser Firefox, has rolled out a new brand campaign, Choose Your Future, positioning itself as a rare voice of scepticism in a browser market that is racing headlong into artificial intelligence.

The campaign is not subtle. It is direct, philosophical and, at times, deliberately unsettling. Rather than celebrating AI as an inevitable upgrade to the web, Mozilla asks a simpler and more uncomfortable question of who is really in control?

Choose Your Future is a series of ad films that imagine a near-future where human agency has been quietly handed over to machines.

In one film, a couple reclines comfortably in the backseat of a car, trusting AI to take the wheel. Their relaxation quickly turns into peril, a visual reminder that convenience can come at a cost.

In another, two young boys excitedly switch on a mysterious new AI gadget. The device asks to know them, urges them not to be afraid and insists they should trust it. When their mother calls them in for dinner, the children walk away. Left alone, the innocent-looking black box sprouts tentacles, an unsubtle but effective metaphor for unseen intent and creeping control.

Three more films follow similar lines, each using surreal imagery to question what happens when decision-making, autonomy and responsibility are outsourced to opaque systems.

This anti-establishment tone is no accident. The campaign forms part of a broader “rebel alliance” strategy under Mozilla’s new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo. His leadership marks a renewed attempt to draw a clear contrast between Firefox and what Mozilla frames as the Big Tech consensus. While competitors increasingly bake AI deeply and automatically into their browsers, Mozilla is arguing for friction, choice and restraint.

At a functional level, the most concrete outcome of this philosophy is what Mozilla calls the “AI kill switch”. Responding directly to user backlash against forced AI features, Firefox will allow users to switch off all AI tools entirely. No prompts, no nudges, no silent integrations. If users want none of it, they can have exactly that.

Mozilla is also drawing a line between open and closed approaches to artificial intelligence. Its preferred model is open source, open data and open compute, pitched as a challenge to the proprietary systems that dominate the current AI boom. The company argues that transparency and auditability are essential if AI is to serve users rather than extract value from them.

The positioning, however, is intentionally nuanced. Choose Your Future is not an anti-AI manifesto, even if some of its imagery flirts with dystopia. Mozilla is itself investing heavily in artificial intelligence. Under Enzor-DeMeo, Firefox is evolving into what the company calls a modern AI browser, complete with optional features such as sidebar chatbots. The difference, Mozilla insists, is consent.

That tension sits at the heart of the campaign. Internally, Mozilla is navigating what could be described as an AI conflict. Externally, it is railing against automated, centralised and data-exploitative systems. Internally, it is using its reported $1.4 billion in reserves to back AI startups focused on safety, governance and accountability. The ambition is to form a counterweight to dominant players such as OpenAI and Anthropic, not by outspending them, but by building what Mozilla calls a trustworthy AI ecosystem.

This thinking is laid out in the organisation’s official blogpost, published alongside the campaign and the 2025–26 State of Mozilla report. “We’re at a fork in the road,” the post declares. AI, Mozilla acknowledges, is already shaping how people search, create and communicate. Some users love it but want it to work better for society. Others want nothing to do with it at all. Mozilla’s answer is not to force a compromise, but to offer a choice.

The State of Mozilla report itself departs from the format of a traditional annual update. Alongside product updates for Firefox and Thunderbird, it outlines investments in open source AI and privacy-preserving technologies, details how Mozilla balances its finances with its mission, and shares stories from employees and community members pushing AI in what the organisation sees as a better direction.

Mozilla frames this approach as an extension of its long-standing “double bottom line”, advancing the public interest while building sustainable businesses. That model, the company argues, allows it to say no to extractive approaches and to support ecosystems that might otherwise struggle to survive.