"This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking."
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 t
Google Chrome automatically installs local neural network components on user systems via default configurations. The browser downloads a 4GB
Procedures for disabling it
okay, look, 4GB sounds like a lot, yes, but is it that much in a time when the smallest drive you can get in a Macbook is 1 terabyte? when the last game I installed from Steam was a 136GB download?
on-device AI is more secure and more efficient than cloud-based systems, and "software comes with feature you don't use" is not a scandal. I get being annoyed and wanting to free up the space if you're never going to use it, but the way this is being framed is weirdly intense. "reaching into users' machines and writing a file" is a weird way to describe a feature update to an application people presumably downloaded on purpose.
especially when there's literal actual spyware shipped in Chrome that we should be talking about. like, don't take me for a Google defender here, this is more of a "stop focusing your ire at big tech companies exclusively on AI" post.
it's like, three hours later and the frenzy in the notes is somehow even worse. I just saw someone claim this is "claiming the right to commandeer your personal device for AI processing". no it fucking isn't. what the fuck are you talking about. it's not running someone else's AI workload on your computer for fuck's sake. if you don't use the thing then it doesn't get used. you are pissing on the poor so hard they'll need life jackets.
The issue I see with it is the continued pushing of AI services without any respect for user consent or desire for said service.
A simple prompt when loading Chrome, asking if you would like to install the local AI model, would completely solve this.
Also, the smallest drive in a current MacBook is 256gb, of which 4gb WOULD be a significant chunk to have wasted on a feature you may not want or need.
my mistake on the Mac thing, I forgot the Neo existed (I hate Macs, I was just reaching for a familiar reference). that said, selling a laptop with 256GB of storage in 2026 feels....unwise?
anyway, I completely agree that asking the question on install would be a reasonable solution and I wouldn't be surprised if the EU forces them to do exactly that after 2 or 3 years of hand-wringing.
to reiterate, it's not that I think this is a particularly good look for Google, it just irritates the hell out of me that people are so focused on AI hate that they'll make up stuff about Gemini Nano while blowing right past the nightmare that is Chrome's so-called "ad privacy" mode
I'm amazed someone is so willing to look like the... digital equivalent of a Ezra Klein as to take anything google says about ad privacy at face value
Seriously you're being very reactionary centrist about AI. Tone Policing is definitely the most important thing here.
so, first of all, I literally just said Chrome's "Ad Privacy" mode is a "nightmare"???
but also and, I think, more importantly, since when does the definition of "tone policing" include wanting criticisms to be reasonable and not completely made up
[squints] wait. you're the person who called me "nuanced poisoned", a phenomenon you claimed was "the main mechanism that births evil". what the fuck are you still doing here? [blocks giddily]
like, multiple people in the notes are calling this "a virus". it isn't. "virus" is a word with a meaning. the correct term for this would be something like "feature bloat".
multiple people are saying "it re-downloads itself if you uninstall" - no, it re-downloads itself if you delete the file without turning off the feature. "uninstall" is a word with a meaning, and if you uninstall Chrome it does not re-download itself.
people are blaming this for slowing down their computers when Chrome isn't running. that's not how anything works, unless 4GB was enough to put them into "extremely low hard disk space" territory.
I saw one person explicitly accuse Google of somehow installing this file when they didn't even have Chrome installed, which is straight-up impossible.
accuracy matters. reality matters. there is no good way to do "making shit up to support my worldview but it's okay because my worldview is right"
here's a very direct example of the harm making shit up can do: there's a version of this post going around with a comment tacked on about how any browser based on Chromium is "compromised" by this local AI model, so no one should use Brave or Vivaldi either.
this is not true. Gemini is closed-source, which means it can't be included in the open-source Chromium browser or anything based on Chromium. not to mention that Vivaldi specifically has promised not to include any AI features, so even if Gemini Nano were included in Chromium, they would remove it from their source tree - which they could absolutely do, because that's how open source works.
do you see what's happening here? yelling lies to each other in a circle because you hate AI is now making people scared to use a browser that specifically, purposefully does not have AI features.
