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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

#521

Post by mcmcmc »

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

I don’t think you understand what “free” means

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

#522

Post by BiteCode_dev »

maxloh wrote: post #423
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…

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.

Does each playwright (or similar automation system) count as a different user, and does it keep the model around ?

If yes, it's an interesting API to call when a AI crawler hit your website.

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

#524

Post by herf »

If you back up to "intention" it's fully insane to make a GDPR argument against on-device AI. Yes it downloads bits, but those bits are not there to identify you - they are basically a local copy of the internet. This enables private data to be kept on-device. Having no personal data leave the device is fantastic for GDPR compliance.

The good point in this article is about how the "AI" features in Chrome all use Google's cloud API and not a local model. That's true and some of it should be local. ("AI mode" uses the Web index, so it fundamentally cannot be local, but there are features that could be.)

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

#526

Post by polishTar »

kingstnap wrote: post #478
gbgarbeb wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.8 to 4.5 kW.

This was my math: 0.1 kWh * 3600s/hr = 360 kJ 360 kJ / 8s (time for 1 GB) = 45 kW

Or, slightly more direct: .1kW*h/GB * .125GB/s * 3600s/h = 45kW

Those are some goofy numbers. Obviously incorrect.

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

#527

Post by ComputerGuru »

crumpled wrote: post #484
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

> I suppose this means that ALL the browser vendors are likely to implement something

Mozilla has taken a strong stand against the prompt api.

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

#528

Post by arjie »

The future is local models. This makes sense and I wouldn't be surprised if future web standards require this to be swappable so that you can use a model of your choice as the intelligence in the various APIs. Being able to use summarization and text extraction locally will be a powerful enabler. Apple's ability to copy text out of photos etc. is really useful.

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

#529

Post by hansmayer »

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

> Wait, let me pay my HVAC guy $500 he deserved because he came all the way from his home to replace a fuse

Right, because its totally something an LLM can do, right?

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