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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

#391
Like the recent copilot silent signing incident, the without consent part is blatant foul move.

If you don't like be treated like anything but human, you should seriously consider replacing chrome with ungoogled chromium or other browsers.

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

#393

Framing 4GB of data moving in a world of petabytes of traffic as a specific environmental disaster is kind of a stretch, regardless of whether we want the model.

Its unsollicited. Not everyone has fiber either

not just fiber, e.g. Netflix requires "only" (reliable) ~15Mb/s for a 4k stream, that means most people in most countries feel little difference between ~25 Mb/s and 1Gb/s in their "every day" usage. Sure it's a huge difference if you download a 80GiB AAA game, or preload a 4k movie. But in my experience (which definitely doesn't apply to all countries) a lot of non tech affine people don't do that that often an if they do it (e.g. movies before travel) they tend to do it over the night so it still works out just fine with not so fast internet.

So for a lot of people paying for more then 25-50Mb/s (pro person) makes only sense if it isn't too costly. Hence I rarely see people going for more then 250-500 Mb/s even iff 1Gb/s is available and they have money. And for non-gamers with little money, I mostly see them with ~50Mb/s (or paying for 50Mb/s but getting much less due to old wires :( ).

(Also IMHO The more important things compared to 1Gb/s is how much of the bought bandwidth is reliably available at all times _with good latency_...)

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

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a small model, so what utility can I / Google expect from it? What is the on-board model used for?

It's not a very good small model to be honest. That said, you might be surprised to learn that some of the models from 3b-9b could probably replace 80% of the things nonvibe coders use chatgpt for. Its a good idea to run small models locally if your computer can host them for privacy and cash saving reasons. But how can you trust Google to autoinstall one on your machine in 2026? I just couldn't do it.

All that matters is some MBA product manager at Google was celebrated for shipping this. Hooray!

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Silent” seems appropriate given it historically never required such a large storage requirement and the nature of the new feature seems entirely optional; and it’s happening silently as part of a normal upgrade.

> it's happening silently as part of a normal upgrade. No, this is not true. The large requirement comes after a user wants to use the feature, not as a part of the normal upgrade. If the user never engages with the feature, it's not downloaded.

According to above, it is triggered by the website calling the feature. The user might have no idea. That's not what consent looks like

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

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a small model, so what utility can I / Google expect from it? What is the on-board model used for?

It's not a very good small model to be honest. That said, you might be surprised to learn that some of the models from 3b-9b could probably replace 80% of the things nonvibe coders use chatgpt for. Its a good idea to run small models locally if your computer can host them for privacy and cash saving reasons. But how can you trust Google to autoinstall one on your machine in 2026? I just couldn't do it.

> But how can you trust Google to autoinstall one on your machine

Why are AI models something I'd be uniquely unable to trust Google to install, compared all the other code included in Chrome updates? Is your point just that you shouldn't trust Chrome in general?

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

#398

"Silently installs" is misleading. They are including a file in the package which is presumably related to the functionality of the software. I don't use chrome for a long list of reasons but it is not standard or expected to get consent for that.

Look at how many headlines indicated that something is silently happening. It's a weird trend at the moment.

If it gets the clicks it sticks.

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

#399
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, which is why I use paid-for OSes and browsers, instead of free ones like Linux or Firefox. I don't want to be the product.

Man, this is a dumb take even by HN standards.

No, the dumb take is believing that if you pay for something you are not the product anyway.

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

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Silent” seems appropriate given it historically never required such a large storage requirement and the nature of the new feature seems entirely optional; and it’s happening silently as part of a normal upgrade.

> it's happening silently as part of a normal upgrade. No, this is not true. The large requirement comes after a user wants to use the feature, not as a part of the normal upgrade. If the user never engages with the feature, it's not downloaded.

That's even more silent.
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