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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

#931

Post by freehorse »

willis936 wrote: post #177
freehorse wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to have the sidebar chatbot thing. When mozilla added these AI features, after the update the browser prompted me to whether I want it or not, with the "yes" and "no" being equally easy to select. It did not add them without consent. You can disable all AI features altogether, or you can completely remove chatbot sidebar specifically (with 2 clicks) and have the rest of the features if you want them. G…

That's neat. Firefox has never prompted me on any of my instances and the sidebar is still present. Wish they would ask everyone for consent.

Firefox does not even have a default provider. It is not like the chatbot panel itself can even exist without a user actively choosing a provider and potentially having to log in. The default is to have a selection menu, which then basically loads the interface of the llm provider themselves. So when they introduced it I remember been prompted to select a provider or close it.

Similarly with their separate summarisation etc features I was prompted whether I wanted a local model, online model (I think), or not at all. It did not download 4gb of data without consent.

We can keep complaining about details forever but it is like missing the forest completely.

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

#932

Post by monegator »

crazygringo wrote: post #560

Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…

Let's say i give zero fucks about gemini and "AI" in general, or in any case am not using google's offering.

i'd rather have a popup asking me if i want to. I don't see firefox nagging me with GBs of data for local translations (arguably the only good use for everybody right now)

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

#933

Post by freehorse »

PinkaDunka wrote: post #178
freehorse wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to have the sidebar chatbot thing. When mozilla added these AI features, after the update the browser prompted me to whether I want it or not, with the "yes" and "no" being equally easy to select. It did not add them without consent. You can disable all AI features altogether, or you can completely remove chatbot sidebar specifically (with 2 clicks) and have the rest of the features if you want them. G…

This is article about Chrome doing something undesirable with AI. Which can be easily disabled by going into chrome://flags. And suggestion is to download Firefox which is also doing something undesirable with AI. Which is also can be easily disabled. Seems both browsers are quite similar in this regard, so suggestion to replace one with another is not very helpful?

"Undesirable" means without consent (as per the title also). You can disable the flag (not that trivial in the first place to find it etc), but that can only be after you know of it, and after you get to know of the flag, which is probably after it already has downloaded the models. FF asks before if you want to download them or not.

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

#934

Post by syndeo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #614
syndeo wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually really useful for web devs to have access to a local model. Whether or not browsers should bundle their own rather than using the system-provided model(s) is up for debate, however. For the time being, though, Google does have some of the better small ones. Furthermore, users aren’t going to want to have to wait for an extra thing to download before their web apps can use AI. That’s the thing… Without c…

> really useful for web devs to have access to a local model I’m not opposed to this. I don’t want Google, an advertising quasi monopoly, to be auto-installing its own AIs on everyone’s computers.

Totally fair. Depends on how it's used, really.

If it's to allow the web apps I use to work with more privacy, or to enable smaller/indie players (that can't easily afford to burn a bunch of API tokens for every user) to offer some basic AI-based features in their web apps, then I'm all for that.

This is the whole appeal of Apple's Foundation models on iOS too.

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

#935

Post by sgbeal »

AdminAccount wrote: post #924
sgbeal wrote: post #855

The following seems to keep Chrome from re-downloading this beast: # From one's $HOME dir: rm -fr ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel mkdir -p ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel touch ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel/weights.bin chmod 0400 ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel/weights.bin chmod 0500 ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel Adapt as appropriate for your O…

Might be a good addition for https://superuser.com/questions/1937372/

> Might be a good addition for https://superuser.com/questions/1937372/

Done! Edit: nevermind - i've deleted it. The community guidelines request/require that responses actually attempt to answer the question (how to block all AI usage), which this response does not address.

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

#936

Post by syndeo »

wtallis wrote: post #601
syndeo wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually really useful for web devs to have access to a local model. Whether or not browsers should bundle their own rather than using the system-provided model(s) is up for debate, however. For the time being, though, Google does have some of the better small ones. Furthermore, users aren’t going to want to have to wait for an extra thing to download before their web apps can use AI. That’s the thing… Without c…

You haven't even tried to provide a hypothetical example of what a web app should try to do using a local LLM, nor addressed the obvious questions about how that kind of thing should be standardized, what level of local LLM capability is reasonable for a web app to expect, or how permissions for that should be managed given that a local LLM is not just a tax on local storage capacity. So why should anyone take it as…

I for one run a small Scripture-study web app that makes use of this on Chrome browsers when available to provide summarizations of long commentary articles. I'm also looking to use it to power topical search.

I allow free open access to the content, as blocking it behind an account signup doesn't sit right ethically—it should be open and free for everyone.

The issue there is that there's no way to easily secure the API from being hammered by bad actors. (Due to the often-controversial response many have to Scripture, apps like these draw special kinds of negative attention.) You can set rate limits, but people can still abuse those, just to try to burn your money. I can get by for free (or relatively cheap, fully paid out-of-pocket as none of this is monetized) on Vercel/Netlify/etc, but inference is expensive, and a prime target for those trying to cause trouble.

If in the future the web exposes local "foundation" models that web apps can assume are present, that would open up great possibilities like these for indie devs like myself. Being able to offer useful and compelling features without worrying about abuse would be nice. That's my point.

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

#937

Post by stronglikedan »

jchw wrote: post #585
crazygringo wrote: post #560

Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…

It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of. Reminds me a bit of back when installing software was a minefield due to all of the integrated "promotions" for things like toolbars, only now they've vertically integrated the unwanted software, cutting out the middleman. Honestly, for most features you could justifiably say its fine. I mean honestly, how large is an Englis…

> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of.

You just described at least 90% of the software packages on your machine, if not 100%. Almost all software contains modules that go unused by certain users.

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

#938

Post by anigbrowl »

kjs3 wrote: post #922
anigbrowl wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. Yes, that's the problem

I had a client complain that some software we recommended installed a database. How fucking dare we install this giant blob of software without his consent! It was MySQL, and integral to the application. So what's your solution? A click-through acceptance of every single library, component, dependency, etc. every app uses? P.S. - out here in the real world of the people who just use software, they don't want this. Wh…

That's going to the opposite extreme. Making major components optional and including some basic information about what they are at install time is easy to do. It's very common with creative software and even some games.

I think this will be increasingly true in this extended period of more expensive memory and storage media. The Macbook Neo, for example, has 250GB onboard storage and 8gb memory. Many users will not want to spend 2% of their storage and allocate half their memory just to run a web browser.

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

#940

Post by alterom »

KoolKat23 wrote: post #881
ethagnawl wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is a far cry from 4 GiB Equating a 4GB file installed without explicit consent to the installation of a language dictionary is comical. That's like saying an unwanted political mailer left in your mailbox is the equivalent of a pallette of hammers left in your driveway.

Honestly this is 2026. Chrome on my phone is nearly 2gb. Google on my phone is 1gb. 4gb storage isn't outrageous, Windows barely runs on anything below 128gb storage. Right now my phone has 445gb unused memory and usage isn't likely to go up much. My PlayStation eats 500gb for breakfast. Heck I use a 2011 Thinkpad for casual use and it should still be fine with it. This is also GOOGLE chrome, it serves their ends, in…

>4gb storage isn't outrageous, Windows barely runs on anything below 128gb storag

So, 4GB is outrageous because it takes the very little space left after the existing bloat.

It also still makes Chrome install at least 5X larger.

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