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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

#441

Post by throwway120385 »

bityard wrote: post #435
maxloh wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more severe problem is that Google installs model weight files on a per-user basis, meaning Chrome occupies 4 more GB of space for every OS user on your device.

The company I work at has several environments and hundreds of VDI users in each environment. Chrome is the default browser in all of them. By my rough napkin math, this one small change by Google will eat up at least 15 terabytes of new disk space in total. (I sure hope we are using deduplication at the physical storage layer...)

It's fine. Network and disk space are free, right?

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

#442

Post by 21asdffdsa12 »

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…

First the tabs came for the RAM and i did not protest, for i had plenty. Then they came for the chip and i did not protest, for it was dark silcon anyway. Then they came for the HDD.

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

#443

Post by bastawhiz »

baq wrote: post #434

I don't get the outrage. AAA games routinely take 100-200 GBs. I certainly prefer local inference to feeding google my private data over the network (assuming they actually don't do that anyway...)

I already pay for an LLM, and one that's much smarter than Gemini Nano. I didn't ask for this, I didn't make any choice for it to be installed, and I almost certainly won't ever use it.

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

#444

Post by jnwatson »

baq wrote: post #434

I don't get the outrage. AAA games routinely take 100-200 GBs. I certainly prefer local inference to feeding google my private data over the network (assuming they actually don't do that anyway...)

A modest-sized security patch is routinely several gigabytes.

Hell, a few hours of browsing Tiktok or Youtube will take more bandwidth.

This is fake engagement bait.

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

#445

Post by bastawhiz »

What a massive fail on Google's part. They could have given you the option to auth to Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT (or whatever) and provided a meaningfully better product and experience. But instead, they chose to push their crap on everyone. This is the bullshit I expect from Microsoft, not Google.

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

#446

Post by bastawhiz »

kingstnap wrote: post #438
ben_w wrote: post #332

> Energy intensity of network data transfer: 0.06 kWh per GB, the mid-band of Pärssinen et al. (2018) "Environmental impact assessment of online advertising", Science of The Total Environment [14]. The paper reports a 0.04-0.10 kWh/GB range depending on the share of fixed-line vs mobile transfer and inclusion of end-user device energy. 0.06 is a defensible mid-point. 2018? An estimate from 8 years ago is going to be…

0.04 to 0.1 kWh/GB is insane even for 2018 lol. I have gigabit internet (125 MB/s). This would imply when I'm downloading something I'm using 18 to 45 kW of electricity. Completely bonkers.

Clearly you're charging an EV to drive a jar of microsd cards with your data back and forth

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

#447

Post by giancarlostoro »

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.

I'm on an Arch flavor, so its whenever I feel like updating. I try to update frequently enough, but if i wait weeks or months, nothing breaks, it always just works, and I get the latest of everything.

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

#448

Post by tim333 »

jangxx wrote: post #45
dotcoma wrote: post #10

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

It's the browser that annoys me the least. Almost everything just works.

Yeah that's mostly why I use it. When I try Firefox I get out of memory messages for some reason. Also the Google Lens tool is very handy and gets used often.

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

#449

Post by beaugunderson »

RaiausderDose wrote: post #295
tobylane wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm on Chrome 147 too and disabled: "optimization-guide-on-device-model" - Enables optimization guide on device "prompt-api-for-gemini-nano" - Prompt API for Gemini Nano - Prompt API for Gemini Nano with Multimodal Input and deleted weights.bin and the 2025.x folder in "OptGuideOnDeviceModel" Will report if Chrome 148 downloads the model again.

maybe I was on the wrong side of the early release but I’ve deleted this model many times in the last year. I’ve had it for at least 12 months.

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

#450

Post by beaugunderson »

jasonlotito wrote: post #383
vanderZwan wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what is your definition of "installing" exactly? Are you going to split hairs about it not being a separate program being installed and running in the background, but weights being used by code that is run inside the browser? Because honestly, I don't think there's any significant difference from the user's perspective here. Other than the fact that doing the latter bypasses the need to get permission to install…

> A 4 GiB model has nothing to do with the functionality of a web browser. It is something forced on users without their consent. This does not happen. The model is not downloaded unless the user intentionally uses the feature that requires it. Then it's downloaded at that point.

untrue, I’ve deleted it many times in the last year. I don’t think this is new.
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