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A comment on Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. Parent comment

Re:Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your d... by robot-wrangler on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @04:53PM (#48028373)
If someone puts a camera and a microphone on devices that don't need them, then it's a) pushing up the price of goods for everyone with features that mainly serve corporate, b) there are bad actors out there even if you think corporate is a good one, c) no reason to think corporate is a good actor.

Shipping an AI model with a browser is starting to look like sticking cameras on ALL glasses, not just smart glasses, regardless of whether anyone wants that. Saying this is fine and not unusual is clearly motivated reasoning and just normalizes the surveillance state. It's very obvious the way this ends. Browser-based models will eventually be using your computer at the edge to save corporate money in the cloud while they do ever more expensive and invasive stuff to profile you.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your d... by marcosdumay on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @07:19PM (#48030048)
Shipping the model with the browser is exactly the opposite of what you are claiming.

The alternative is sending the data to Google.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your d... by _carbyau_ on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @10:15PM (#48031343)
Back to the assumptions.

If the onboard LLM means no data sending and you get your own little service wholly subservient to you like a good little program. That's nice!

If the onboard LLM means better data filtering, possibly even exploration of the local system, to send information to Google while lessening their datacentre bills running LLM services. That seems a little underhanded to just bake into things without notification.

Pick your assumption, you get your outcome. What are your assumptions?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your d... by blackoil on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @11:32PM (#48031819)
Why assume? it should be observable. You can check the code and data traffic to see how it is used.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your d... by robot-wrangler on Wednesday May 06, 2026 @05:43AM (#48034277)
Can't observe the future, so learn from the past.. or use common sense. You don't react to a stranger or a mysterious camera in your household by saying, wow ok, let's see if anything bad happens.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your d... by prepend on Wednesday May 06, 2026 @02:55PM (#48040130)
Google is doing both. They still ship to Google.

Knowing Google, the local model probably means even more data are sent to Google.

[ Parent | on HN ]