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

Post by FoxBJK » Tue, May 05, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

z3t4 wrote: post #463

dist-epoch wrote: post #285

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.

Why is nobody building a paid for browser with built in search engine and LLM assistant? Should probably make it open source for transparency. And before anyone says you would build/compile it yourself if it was open source, those ppl are already running their self compiled tools and are not the target market.

Post by chrisjj » Tue, May 05, 2026, 4:20 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #314

doginasuit wrote: post #278

"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.

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…

Post by t1234s » Tue, May 05, 2026, 4:26 PM UTC

Post by mrguyorama » Tue, May 05, 2026, 4:28 PM UTC

raxxorraxor wrote: post #329

toyg wrote: post #234

How hard would have been to add a simple message, warning people about it and offering to opt out? Most would have clicked OK without reading anyway, and Google could pretend they give a shit about users. Unless they expected blowback, and that kind of message is the "compromise" they want to eventually land on.

I think a local AI model is appreciated, but it being bundled and executed through Chrome, I expect that more or less all data get exfiltrated by Google. They simply read your mails, how would you expect there to be anything resembling decency in a company like that? It is the ad business. Bad thing is that people still use gmail.

Post by crumpled » Tue, May 05, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

sheept wrote: post #452

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…

You can already trigger a 2 GB model download with the Summarizer API[0], which is already shipped in Chrome. Summarizer.create() [0]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/summarizer-api#model-do... I think this is a distinct model from the Prompt API, since the other shipped AI APIs use fine tuned models.