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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

#481

Post by recursive »

ai-x wrote: post #472
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.

4GB, $0.10 (whatever the HD price) that is the equivalent of a High School level intelligent brain that can perform many cognitive tasks (and in the future even PhD level intelligence) for free? Oh, the horror!!! Wait, let me pay my HVAC guy $500 he deserved because he came all the way from his home to replace a fuse

It doesn't make sense to apply wholesale prices for mass storage. People are running Chrome on specific devices that they already own. Storage is not fungible in this way.

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

#484

Post by crumpled »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #474

This might be worth it if Gemma4 E2B were a good model, but honestly it's absolutely useless in all our testing without further training and finetuning, and those aren't usecases that are fit for normal web browser use such that one would care to support it by adding such overly broad and expensive infrastructure to make it happen. Gemma 4 E4B is a much better model, but it's too large to simply download and run ever…

Most users aren't even going to know that this is here. Web developers will expose this capability to the user. The devs will have to determine if the model is delivering what they need.

It's good to have something to work with if these Web APIs are going to be part of a standard. I suppose this means that ALL the browser vendors are likely to implement something

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

#485

Post by rmac »

wuschel wrote: post #147
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…

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

this is considered a large model. i think you might be surprised how many "small" models chrome has already pulled down on your disk.

but to answer your question: one of the services that uses a small model: PermissionsAIv4

""" Use the Permission Predictions Service and the AIv4 model to surface permission notification requests using a quieter UI when the likelihood of the user granting the permission is predicted to be low. Requires `Make Searches and Browsing Better` to be enabled. – Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS, Android """

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

#486

Post by jimmaswell »

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…

This sounds perfectly reasonable. No objection from me.

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

#487

Post by Narishma »

dist-epoch wrote: post #285
z3t4 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

You are still the product with commercial OSes. Paying doesn't stop them from shoving ads and telemetry wherever they can.

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

#489

Post by stalfosknight »

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.

Safari

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

#490

Post by beedeebeedee »

ai-x wrote: post #472
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.

4GB, $0.10 (whatever the HD price) that is the equivalent of a High School level intelligent brain that can perform many cognitive tasks (and in the future even PhD level intelligence) for free? Oh, the horror!!! Wait, let me pay my HVAC guy $500 he deserved because he came all the way from his home to replace a fuse

If you’re pissed you had to pay your HVAC guy to drive to your house and do something you think is trivial, why didn’t you do it yourself?
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