New attribute to control UA-provided writing assistance

[sanketj]

Request for Mozilla Position on an Emerging Web Specification

• Specification Title: New attribute to control UA-provided writing assistance
• Specification or proposal URL (if available): New attribute to control UA-provided writing assistance whatwg/html#9065, Add a new attribute called writingsuggestions to control UA-provided writing assistance whatwg/html#10018
• Explainer URL (if available): https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/main/WritingSuggestions/explainer.md
• Caniuse.com URL (optional):
• Bugzilla URL (optional): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1871621
• Mozillians who can provide input (optional): @smaug---- @zcorpan
• Description:
  UAs are starting to provide writing suggestions to users as they type on various editable fields across the web (see the use case section below). While this is generally useful for users, there are cases when developers may want to turn off UA-provided writing assistance, such as extensions or sites that wish to provide similar functionality on their own.

We propose the addition of a new attribute called writingsuggestions with values on/off that would allow developers to turn on/off browser-provided writing suggestions. This attribute will have a default state per element, as established by the UA. The attribute's state for an element can also be inherited from ancestor elements, thereby allowing developers to control this functionality at a per-element or per-document/sub-document scale.

• Related discussion: New attribute to control UA-provided writing assistance whatwg/html#9065

[smaug----]

I wonder how writing suggestions will work in practice. I guess the suggestions won't be part of the DOM, but somehow in UA specific "shadow text".

[jesup]

I assume so.

Is this proposal in any way related to recent press releases about AI-powered writing help? How would it interact with that?

[smaug----]

There was some discussion today about this during WHATNOT, and sounds like some implementations will have separate popup and some will have the suggestions inline