<![CDATA["Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent"]]>"Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent"

Recommended to read some of the details in this report... It's completely bonkers and immoral, whether because of privacy or climate. There is zero respect for the user nor planet left.

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Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — That Privacy Guy!

Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.

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That Privacy Guy! (www.thatprivacyguy.com)

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/98096dcd-e3ed-43e6-8855-2cc54f6b650f/google-chrome-silently-installs-a-4-gb-ai-model-on-your-device-without-consentRSS for NodeFri, 15 May 2026 02:30:57 GMTTue, 05 May 2026 09:16:28 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 14:00:56 GMT]]>@liquor_american @benjaoming

I don't think I have it, so I feel sort of ripped off right now.

I tried asking the AI from google to tell me where it is.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/dckim/statuses/116522330117665861https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/dckim/statuses/116522330117665861Tue, 05 May 2026 14:00:56 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 13:55:23 GMT]]>@liquor_american @benjaoming i think i'll search for it now. And maybe I should read the blog post... hmmm...

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/dckim/statuses/116522308294737991https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/dckim/statuses/116522308294737991Tue, 05 May 2026 13:55:23 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 12:59:34 GMT]]>axel. No one wants to use 4GB LLMs, though. Even the 20GB version of Gemma is frustratingly "stupid" and "insubordinate". A 4GB model is going be impossibly unreliable. There's no value in using these as a distributed data centre.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wanderingadventure.party/post/613https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wanderingadventure.party/post/613Tue, 05 May 2026 12:59:34 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 12:47:06 GMT]]>@ferricoxide those are all good questions - I'm cheering for you to go and make the experiment with your local installation and share your findings (before uninstalling Chrome)

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.data.coop/users/benjaoming/statuses/116522039814736693https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.data.coop/users/benjaoming/statuses/116522039814736693Tue, 05 May 2026 12:47:06 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 12:14:44 GMT]]>@benjaoming@social.data.coop

Also, I tend to make use of multiple (per) browser profiles to keep "personal" and "work" (etc.) wholly separate from each other. If I had two profiles under my user account, would I end up with 8GiB in models getting shoved onto my system?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://blahaj.zone/notes/alw5njhbbtsr01d6https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://blahaj.zone/notes/alw5njhbbtsr01d6Tue, 05 May 2026 12:14:44 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 12:14:26 GMT]]>@benjaoming@social.data.coop

Also, I tend to make use of multiple (per) browser profiles to keep "personal" and "work" (etc.) wholly separate from each other. If I had two profiles under my user account, would I end up with 8GiB in models getting shoved onto my system?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://blahaj.zone/notes/alw5n5p5btsr01d5https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://blahaj.zone/notes/alw5n5p5btsr01d5Tue, 05 May 2026 12:14:26 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 12:13:54 GMT]]>@ferricoxide it would be interesting with a before/after test for sure! thanks for sharing!

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.data.coop/users/benjaoming/statuses/116521909242605261https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.data.coop/users/benjaoming/statuses/116521909242605261Tue, 05 May 2026 12:13:54 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 12:11:29 GMT]]>@benjaoming@social.data.coop

So, while I have Chrome installed, I'm going to guess I haven't launched Chrome since they started this fuckery?

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]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://blahaj.zone/notes/alw5jdgebtsr01c8https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://blahaj.zone/notes/alw5jdgebtsr01c8Tue, 05 May 2026 12:11:29 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 11:43:25 GMT]]>@benjaoming
Shortly...
Google?
Chrome???
Never!

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.uno/users/kens/statuses/116521789362720640https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.uno/users/kens/statuses/116521789362720640Tue, 05 May 2026 11:43:25 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 11:22:36 GMT]]>@benjaoming Thank you. Uninstalled Chrome, which I rarely use anyway.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/epicdemiologist/statuses/116521707526449544https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/epicdemiologist/statuses/116521707526449544Tue, 05 May 2026 11:22:36 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 10:49:53 GMT]]>@ariarhythmic @benjaoming Exactly. Now imagine being able to orchestrate those billions of 4GB LLMs. That’s a huge data center, with your users paying the electricity bill.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://norden.social/users/axeln/statuses/116521578884328462https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://norden.social/users/axeln/statuses/116521578884328462Tue, 05 May 2026 10:49:53 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 10:39:53 GMT]]>@benjaoming at least you will know that this is the absolute best one. I think a lot of people will actually be happy about this. I am fairly certain that this has not taken place. It can be verified directly in the file system.

How can this be verified? I'm pretty sure it's false.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/dckim/statuses/116521539557878784https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/dckim/statuses/116521539557878784Tue, 05 May 2026 10:39:53 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 10:39:39 GMT]]>@benjaoming ⬆️

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.online/users/NatureMC/statuses/116521538668077855https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.online/users/NatureMC/statuses/116521538668077855Tue, 05 May 2026 10:39:39 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 10:38:56 GMT]]>@axeln @benjaoming They already have the browser itself for that, downloading the model is part of the control

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://ohai.social/ap/users/115628614496668967/statuses/116521535805637217https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://ohai.social/ap/users/115628614496668967/statuses/116521535805637217Tue, 05 May 2026 10:38:56 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 10:34:23 GMT]]>@ariarhythmic @benjaoming If you have that model deployed on a billion machines in your own browser, who’s to stop you from remote controlling it?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://norden.social/users/axeln/statuses/116521517961102556https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://norden.social/users/axeln/statuses/116521517961102556Tue, 05 May 2026 10:34:23 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 10:08:19 GMT]]>@benjaoming That's 3 FHD pirated movies' worth of traffic and storage wasted on AI slop served to many users many of whom will never touch it

fucking hell

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://ohai.social/ap/users/115628614496668967/statuses/116521415417666621https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://ohai.social/ap/users/115628614496668967/statuses/116521415417666621Tue, 05 May 2026 10:08:19 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent" on Tue, 05 May 2026 09:32:26 GMT]]>@benjaoming at least for offline ai usage like ollama or for other reasons?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mstdn.social/users/hacknorris/statuses/116521274332926221https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mstdn.social/users/hacknorris/statuses/116521274332926221Tue, 05 May 2026 09:32:26 GMT