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!
www.thatprivacyguy.com
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.

The article gives 3 options to avoid it:

The only ways to make the deletion stick are to disable Chrome’s AI features through chrome://flags or enterprise policy tooling that home users do not generally have, or to uninstall Chrome entirely

  1. It can probably be reverted at their whim at any time
  2. You probably don’t have access to it
  3. It is the most realistic option, just use another browser
  • fckreddit@lemmy.ml
    11·
    7 days ago

    These Big Tech are really getting comfortable with downloading malware now. Sign of desperation or Hubris?

    • fodor@lemmy.zip
      61·
      6 days ago

      They are incredibly desperate because they know that bubble is sitting there waiting to go. And all of these companies are at risk of major catastrophe. They need to embed themselves as much as possible before everything goes to hell if they want to survive after it.

    • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
      6·
      6 days ago

      Their absolute disregard for any form of consent is a hell of a flag on so many levels