Augmented Steam browser plugin added AI features from VaporLens

Generative AI is everywhere, and now it may be in your browser plugins too. The popular Augmented Steam recently had some backlash due to VaporLens integration.

What is Augmented Steam? A browser plugin that adds various extra helper features when browsing Steam like expanded pricing details, more filters, the ability to skip age gates, adds useful links to other websites and lots more. But with release v4.5.0 they added in VaporLens integration.

VaporLens is a site that uses Generative AI / LLMs to analyse Steam user reviews and provide various summaries and other details.

Augmented Steam enabled it by default, which caused a fair amount of discussion amongst users to the point the developer put up a poll on GitHub to ask users about keeping it. With 158 votes, 66% voted to keep it. Lots of comments talking about it, like how it was added and enabled without any notification - it was just there as part of Augmented Steam.

With the latest release v4.6.0 the developer decided to keep it in, it's still enabled by default too but "in a collapsed state". So the only thing that has changed is that people who want it now need to click to expand it, everyone else still needs to either disable the feature or use a different plugin if you don't want to support generative AI being added to more things.