Intend to Extend Experiment: Rewriter API
Deepti Bogadi
Contact emails
kenji...@chromium.org, m...@chromium.org,ay...@chromium.org
Explainer
https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md
Specification
https://webmachinelearning.github.io/writing-assistance-apis/#rewriter-api
Summary
The Rewriter API transforms and rephrases input text in requested ways, backed by an on-device AI language model. Developers may use this API to remove redundancies within a text in order to fit into a word limit, rephrase messages to suit the intended audience or to be more constructive if a message is found to use toxic language, rephrasing a post or article to use simpler words and concepts and more. An enterprise policy (GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings) is available to disable the underlying model downloading which will render the API unavailable.
Blink component
Blink > AI > Writing Assistance
Web Feature ID
No information provided
TAG review
https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/991
TAG review status
Pending
Origin Trial Name
Rewriter API
Chromium Trial Name
AIRewriterAPI
Origin Trial documentation link
https://github.com/webmachinelearning/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md#rewriter-api
WebFeature UseCounter name
Rewriter_Create
Risks
Interoperability and Compatibility
This feature has definite interoperability and compatibility risks, due to the likelihood that different implementations will use different language models, prompts, and fine-tunings, and even within a single implementation such as Chrome, these pieces will likely change over time. Additionally, not all browsers and operating systems will have a built-in language model to expose, and not all devices will be powerful enough to run one effectively. We are taking a variety of steps to attempt to mitigate these risks. For example, the specification is designed to allow the API to be backed by a cloud-based language model. This approach could extend the functionality to a wider range of devices and users. The API is designed to abstract away the specifics of the underlying language model, including prompts and fine-tuning. This prevents developers from relying on specific outputs, ensuring they receive rewritten text rather than structured data that might vary across implementations. Finally, the API surface is designed with many clear points of failure, that encourage the developer to probe for capabilities ahead of time and fall back to other techniques if a capability is not available. Nevertheless, interoperability and compatibility risk remains high for these sorts of APIs, and we'll be closely monitoring it during the experiment period.
Gecko: Negative (https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1067)
WebKit: No signal (https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/393)
Web developers: Mixed signals (https://github.com/WICG/proposals/issues/163) Prototyping with partners behind a flag revealed enthusiasm and many prototypes built, from which we drew the discussion of potential use cases [1]. Feedback on the WICG thread was more mixed. Some themes we saw include: asking for more capabilities (e.g. full prompting of a language model instead of higher-level APIs (our response at [2]); multi-modal support); desire to make sure the API actually works robustly in many real-world use cases; removal of any safety/ethical safeguards; and confusion about client-side vs. cloud APIs. [1]: https://github.com/WICG/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md#summarizer-api [2]: https://github.com/WICG/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md#directly-exposing-a-prompt-api
Other signals:
Activation
This feature would definitely benefit from having polyfills, backed by any of: cloud services, lazily-loaded client-side models using WebGPU, or the web developer's own server. We anticipate seeing an ecosystem of such polyfills grow as more developers experiment with this API.
WebView application risks
Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?
No information provided
Goals for experimentation
Although developers have prototyped using the behind-a-flag implementation and given good feedback, several partners are interested in testing out the API with real users. We're looking forward to getting feedback from such testing, especially with regards to output quality, multilingual support, and what types of input data are handled well vs. poorly. We also want to understand whether we've found the right set of options to offer to control the output, and whether the resulting output reflects those controls to the extent that developers expect.
Reason this experiment is being extended
Rewriter API suffers from perceived quality issues and a critical language support disconnect. These APIs are currently not production-ready for many use cases, particularly those outside of English. In addition, we are also seeing low adoption in the OT phase for this API. Hence, we are requesting the extension of the trial to give us time to collect more feedback from our partners and make the API more robust and resilient.
Ongoing technical constraints
As discussed above, not all devices are capable of running the language models required to implement this API. The availability() function allows developers to feature-detect whether the current device can support the API.
Debuggability
It is possible that giving DevTools more insight into the nondeterministic states of the model, e.g. random seeds, could help with debugging. See related discussion at https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/prompt-api/issues/9.
Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?
No
Not all platforms will come with a language model. In particular, in the initial stages we are focusing on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?
No
The API surface is reasonably well tested with mocked models, but production model downloading and non-deterministic outputs are not fully tested at the web-platform-tests layer. The explainer discusses this in https://github.com/WICG/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md#specifications-and-tests.
DevTrial instructions
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v6-fOC13zS3S-bOLuqIRbzgmia_aPGJl-wzOx4ItSVE/edit?usp=sharing
Flag name on about://flags
rewriter-api-for-gemini-nano
Finch feature name
AIRewriterAPI
Requires code in //chrome?
True
Tracking bug
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/358214322
Launch bug
https://launch.corp.google.com/launch/4396842
Non-OSS dependencies
Does the feature depend on any code or APIs outside the Chromium open source repository and its open-source dependencies to function?
Yes: this feature depends on a language model, which is bridged to the open-source parts of the implementation via the interfaces in //services/on_device_model.
Estimated milestones
Anticipated spec changes
Open questions about a feature may be a source of future web compat or interop issues. Please list open issues (e.g. links to known github issues in the project for the feature specification) whose resolution may introduce web compat/interop risk (e.g., changing to naming or structure of the API in a non-backward-compatible way).
At this point all known proposed changes have been incorporated into the specification and implementation.
Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status
https://chromestatus.com/feature/5112320150470656?gate=5133588907556864
Links to previous Intent discussions
Intent to Prototype: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAM0wra9Jhe7o59mX5tJPD%3DcZQb2oL3mNi-T57wA86fPXn55OPw%40mail.gmail.com
Intent to Experiment: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAM0wra8dnNHXKM26MvQxZ6LBE16PUbvH6-GH5B3Z2WDv4uH0WQ%40mail.gmail.com
This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.
Deepti Bogadi
Mike Taylor
Similar to the Writer API, this can only be extended for 3 months. See similar questions on progress below, thanks.
Can you please comment on progress in these areas, per https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/#origin-trials?
Draft spec (early draft is ok, but must be spec-like and
associated with the appropriate standardization venue, or WICG)
TAG review (see exceptions)
signals requests
Outreach for feedback from the spec community
WPT tests
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Deepti Bogadi
- Draft spec (early draft is ok, but must be spec-like and associated with the appropriate standardization venue, or WICG)
- The shared Writing Assistance APIs draft spec is relatively comprehensive and has already supported the launch of the Summarizer API, plus Shared Infrastructure already leveraged for Translator and LanguageDetector launches. Reilly Grant has stepped up to take on Editor duties for this spec through its incubation in the Web Machine Learning Community Group.
- TAG review (see exceptions)
- The Writing Assistance APIs TAG review intentionally timed out to focus review efforts on the in-progress Prompt API TAG review request. Since these APIs share much infrastructure, we look forward to receiving thoughtful and broad TAG design feedback.
- signals requests
- These APIs are being discussed within the WebML CG which has participation from other browser vendors and Microsoft intends to follow our lead on launching these APIs using their own models.
- Outreach for feedback from the spec community
- WPT tests
- We've explained significant progress on Writer and Rewriter WPT coverage in the original message. While not fully covered: "The API surface is reasonably well tested with mocked models, but production model downloading and non-deterministic outputs are not fully tested at the web-platform-tests layer. The explainer discusses this in https://github.com/WICG/writing-assistance-apis/blob/main/README.md#specifications-and-tests."
Mike Taylor
Thank you Deepti - ample evidence of progress here as well.
LGTM to extend 3 more milestones (M143 to M145 inclusive).