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

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

#71

Post by Ekaros »

mschuster91 wrote: post #67
walletdrainer wrote: post #30

> Google has not, to my knowledge, published any analysis of the welfare impact of this on the populations whose internet access is metered. This is satire, obviously.

Clearly, you've never lived in Germany or other places that still have data caps and slow and unreliable internet connections. Yes, 4GB of unintended traffic can absolutely wreck someone's finances.

Or places with collateral damage due to failures of German ISPs and state... That is many other parts of Europe while roaming... 4GB is significant cut of the roaming data allocated...

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

#72

Post by dwedge »

elashri wrote: post #40

[flagged]

Oh is this the browser by that company that are funded half a billion dollars a year by Google and want to become an advertising company[1] and wants their browser to become a modern AI browser[2]?

[1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mozillas-ceo-doubles-down-o... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozillas-next...

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

#73

Post by dotcoma »

jimbob45 wrote: post #63
dotcoma wrote: post #10

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

What are the alternatives? Only a massively moneyed corp has the resources to fight vulns at acceptable rates. Firefox doesn’t count because they’re being funded by Google.

In the short term, Helium (if, like me, you can’t live without Chrome’s bookmarks). In the medium term, perhaps Ladybird. In the long term, we’re all dead.

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

#74

Post by z3t4 »

jacquesm wrote: post #6

Not on my devices. Auto update has been abused so often now that it is an embarrassment to the industry. Auto update should be for bug fixes and security issues only.

Auto update is basically a root backdoor, it's especially troublesome when you are not the customer, you are the product!

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

#75

Post by tthu1 »

Jleagle wrote: post #56
tthu1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a lot of traffic to you? 2.5 million downloads of 4 GB are 10 PB of traffic. I think there are be a lot more than 2.5 million Chrome users in the world.

You only download it when some JS requests it for the first time, most people will never have it.

You estimate more or less than 2.5 million?

If you google OptGuideOnDeviceModel, there’s already a lot of results of people asking what it is an how they can delete them. It’s not some kind of obscure niche feature.

I wonder when the first crypto miner-like malware appears that offloads model usage to the client computers.

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

#77

Post by dwedge »

StingyJelly wrote: post #32
sevenzero wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I will never use Brave after the debacle where they injected content into sites downloaded over HTTPS to pretend people were promoting their crypto token and adding a "donate" button on the page.

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

#78

Post by scriptsmith »

tobylane wrote: post #62
scriptsmith wrote: post #31

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 Wh…

Those two (and more) exist in chrome://flags in Chrome 147. I'm disabling them now, with the expectation that will prevent the new default. One option I'm leaving as default is "Use LiteRT-LM runtime for on-device model service inference." Any comment on that?

Those flags will exist already, but will default to enabled in 148.

That other flag is for using a different open-source inference engine to the (from what I can tell) closed-source one that's used by default.

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

#79

Post by petesergeant »

dwedge wrote: post #72
elashri wrote: post #40

[flagged]

Oh is this the browser by that company that are funded half a billion dollars a year by Google and want to become an advertising company[1] and wants their browser to become a modern AI browser[2]? [1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mozillas-ceo-doubles-down-o... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozillas-next...

We Should Improve Society Somewhat

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

#80

Post by ranger_danger »

dwedge wrote: post #72
elashri wrote: post #40

[flagged]

Oh is this the browser by that company that are funded half a billion dollars a year by Google and want to become an advertising company[1] and wants their browser to become a modern AI browser[2]? [1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mozillas-ceo-doubles-down-o... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozillas-next...

Please feel free to suggest a better alternative.
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