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Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

thatprivacyguy.com

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Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#31

Post by scriptsmith »

If Chrome has the #optimization-guide-on-device-model and #prompt-api-for-gemini-nano flags enabled, either because it's part of some Origin Trial / Early Stable Release or something, then web pages will have access to the new Prompt API which allows any webpage to initiate the (one-time) download of the ~2.7 GiB CPU or ~4.0 GiB GPU model using LanguageModel.create()

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/prompt-api

When Chrome 148 releases tomorrow, this will be the default behaviour on desktop.

To download, it should check for 22 GiB free disk space on the volume where your Chrome data dir is, and at least double the model size of free space in your tmp dir.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#32

Post by StingyJelly »

sevenzero wrote: post #21
dotcoma wrote: post #10

Why use a browser from Google or Microsoft in 2026? Why in the world?

What browsers would you recommend? I use Brave but it's still Chromium under the hood. It's the only one that I never had trouble with adblock though. Also lets me play youtube on mobile when my screen is locked.

Brave origin on linux looks pretty solid now. Now I'm using that and Librewolf.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#33

Post by pu_pe »

jve wrote: post #24

> At Chrome's scale, the climate bill for one model push, paid in atmospheric CO2 by the entire planet, is between six thousand and sixty thousand tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, depending on how many devices receive the push. Environmental analysis for operations? Not a fan of thinking in such terms. > For users on capped mobile data plans, particularly in regions where smartphone-as-only-internet is dominant (m…

Some parts of the anti-AI movement are becoming so unhinged that now any use of compute is considered an environmental threat. This degrowth mentality needs to die.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#36

Post by chinathrow »

sevenzero wrote: post #21
dotcoma wrote: post #10

Why use a browser from Google or Microsoft in 2026? Why in the world?

What browsers would you recommend? I use Brave but it's still Chromium under the hood. It's the only one that I never had trouble with adblock though. Also lets me play youtube on mobile when my screen is locked.

Firefox.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#38

Post by nottorp »

trvz wrote: post #16
nottorp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extra power and ram usage without your permission, for example.

Read the article, it's not about that, but a mere 4GB of storage.

Oh and why is it there? Do you really think it's not loaded and executed automatically by default, so some Google executive can justify their "AI" spend?

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#39

Post by Hamuko »

This has to be some kind of a limited rollout, since none of my machines have this AI model installed even when Chrome is updated to the latest version. No indication that anything is being downloaded, since after updating to the latest version of Chrome on this machine, I'm seeing <100 kB/s download speeds for the entire system.
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