Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size.

[ferricoxide@blahaj.zone]

@atoponce@fosstodon.org @tbachner@ruhr.social

Yeah. I'm using an EL9 derivative (via WSL). Looks like I installed the portable installer (i.e., it lives under ${HOME}/firefox/) rather than from RPM, though. A little odd for my habits, but I can't remember why I did it that way.

[beemdvp@techhub.social]

@atoponce AI infra companies cannot seriously get away with pulling shit like this surely

[toychicken@mastodon.social]

@atoponce question seems to be why? If the weights are sitting on your machine, but the ai functionality is still calling home... Is this some weird distributed AI alternative to building data centres? Using your users processing downtime to answer Gemini queries _elsewhere_?

[radhitya@navi.lain.day]

@atoponce the heck 🫩.

[kennethbousquet@mastodon.social]

@atoponce@fosstodon.orgMy thoughts on this would be to write a script that installs in MBR,
At boot time,
With no date limit,
Forensics Tools...
The script that will block such request in the future.
If you are worried about the coding process, AI is Excellent in the helping.

[arpie4math@mathstodon.xyz]

@atoponce

Feature flag is here: chrome://flags/#prompt-api-for-gemini-nano

When enabled, it powers demos like this: https://chrome.dev/web-ai-demos/prompt-api-playground/

#AI #GeminiNano

[almad@fosstodon.org]

@atoponce Good that we have a healthy browser competition and it’s easy to switch

[rothko@beige.party]

@atoponce why are people still even using chrome ffs

[tito_swineflu@sfba.social]

@tbachner @atoponce It's on my ubuntu machine.

[pvdrijst@mastodon.social]

@Linux @atoponce @Vivaldi Well Vivaldi is based on Chrome. type vivaldi:flags and search for nano

[jasper@mastodon.nl]

@mgorny @atoponce 1/0.25nano

[mgorny@social.treehouse.systems]

@jasper @atoponce, why I didn't notice that!

[techienotnetie@social.vivaldi.net]

@pvdrijst @Linux @atoponce @Vivaldi

That a feature is mentioned in that list does not mean it is enabled, it just means the code exists (and it is too difficult to actually disable this at compile-time, that requires too many patches). In fact, the feature the whole download depends on (OptimizationGuide) is disabled in Vivaldi and have been for a while, and I recently disabled the PromptApi features to be on the safe side. In addition, for a while what I suspect is the download URL for the model files being discussed has been pointed at a server that only return 404 responses . in case it should somehow be loaded.

[pjotrprins@mastodon.social]

@civodul if that argument holds then Guix should stop downloading 50Gb per machine per annum

[faduda@mastodon.ie]

@atoponce

I'm assuming that uninstall Chrome and delete its directory also works, because that's what I did.

[civodul@toot.aquilenet.fr]

@pjotrprins Well, note that it does so at the user’s request.

[grimmy@mastodon.social]

@atoponce @msbellows @atoponce @msbellows It's showed up in my chrome profile. I am on ZFS so that might be why it worked. But it came down on April 27th. See https://mastodon.social/@grimmy/116530169590371195 for more info.

[impertinenzija@mastodon.social]

@atoponce In my time we called something like this a "trojan".

[vgoller@nrw.social]

@atoponce google is evil. Not at Level as Facebook/meta. On Par with Microsoft, maybe.

[michaelb@sueden.social]

@atoponce
“never be evil”, they once wrote. Power corrupts.