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.
  • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Probably not stock Android. I’m on GrapheneOS and it doesn’t come with Chrome at all. But I don’t think the article is claiming it happens on Android.

    • FE80@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Vanadium is Chrome derived; but I’m sure Graphene de-enshittifies it to the maximum possible extent.

      • Attacker94@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Technically speaking, it is chromium derived which does make the difference in this instance.