Is your storage mysteriously vanishing? Chrome is forcing a massive AI model onto devices without notice. Discover the "dark patterns" behind the download.

Chrome version 147 silently downloads Gemini Nano’s weights.bin file to local storage, sparking major privacy, data, and legal concerns.

  • Zier@fedia.io
    2·
    20 days ago

    People are shocked when the bad boyfriend (google) that people warned them about, do highly unethical things. That boyfriend only exists to use & abuse you, it has no other purpose anymore.

      • MadhuGururajan@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        19 days ago

        This argument irks me as it merely exists to wash the crimes of companies as if they exist on a different plane of existence where morality doesn’t exist and people pretend corporates are not just a bunch of humans in a trench coat trying to commit the crime without doing the time.

        • username_1@programming.devEnglish
          01·
          19 days ago

          Companies are not people. Companies don’t share the moral with you. Crimes and moral are orthogonal at best.

          • MadhuGururajan@programming.devEnglish
            1·
            19 days ago

            Companies are created by and comprised of people. It’s very clear that the concept of a company is meant to extract wealth by immoral means while shielding the owners from accountability and consequences that being a normal citizen cannot afford.

  • plz1@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    20 days ago

    It’s roughly twice the size of the base app, if it’s the same as Edge, which on my machine is 1.82GB. It’s shady as hell, but “massive” is doing a lot of lifting in this headline.

    • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
      1·
      20 days ago

      That is absolutely massive for a browser. Like multiple orders of magnitude too big. Like what are we even doing

      And I don’t care if everyone is doing it, it’s still too big!

    • garretble@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      20 days ago

      They don’t tell you they are doing it, for one.

      Even though this 4GB is local, the “omnibox” at the top that also uses Gemini shit doesn’t use this 4GB and still goes to the web to determine the slop it wants to provide.

    • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      20 days ago

      It downloads the 4GB local model and then doesn’t use it. Instead chrome LLM usage is routed through their online LLM service instead.

      Chrome’s most recent release, version 147, now includes an AI Mode pill in the omnibox, however, this routes queries to cloud-based AI servers. The local model is not used by that AI, instead it powers features like “Help me write”.

        • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          19 days ago

          You asked a question. I answered the question. I don’t know what people expect these days but I expect programs to download what I tell them to when I tell them to and not suddenly decide to download things I don’t tell them to. Back in the day we called programs that download things without the users consent viruses.

          Especially if it redownloads and reinstalls itself after the user removes it. Doesn’t matter what company it comes from that’s not how things are supposed to work (MS does this same type of crap with copilot and that’s also insane).

  • Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    01·
    21 days ago

    But…
    Isn’t that a good thing?
    I mean, running an LLM locally is much more private than running it somewhere in the cloud at a provider that gets your raw data, isn’t it?
    All your data stays on your device, while making it much, much harder for Google to argument why it should be uploaded to their data centers.

    • slevinkelevra@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      21 days ago

      All your data stays on your device

      You don’t seriously believe that, do you? They just use your device’s memory and CPU, thus your electricity to shovel through your data and then sending all valuable data to their servers.

      • irate944@piefed.socialEnglish
        01·
        20 days ago

        For clarity sake, that’s not what’s happening here. (Don’t misunderstand this comment as defending google, I could write a book about how much they suck)

        The model downloaded is a LLM called Gemini Nano, and it’s used for things like “help me write”, checking if an incoming message is scam, summaries, etc.

        Don’t worry about it itself being a spyware. It’s not; but for argument sake, if we were to assume that it was: they already know a lot about you through their usual apps and services, and get a lot more info out of you through them. This LLM would hardly move that needle.

        The actual issue is that they download it for everyone, even if their devices don’t match the minimum requirements. And without consent. And to enable it, you need to go through several menus, as the default behaviour is to use the cloud (this could change eventually, my understanding is that in this update they’re just laying the foundation)

        But, it’s Google that we’re talking about. Last year they were sentenced to pay a fine for spying on users despite them having their tracking settings off. And it wasn’t the first time iirc. This kind of behaviour is par for the course with them