Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size.
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@atoponce I've no choice but to use Chrome for work on my self-supplied PC, but I'm currently trying:
- Delete weights.bin
- Create an empty file with the same name
- Set its file attributes to read-only, and system to hopefully make it impossible for Google's weights file to replace it when Chrome tries to redownload it.Fingers crossed. If that doesn't work, I'll see if the hidden attribute works any better than the system attribute.
@pauldrye It seems toggling chrome://settings/system -> On-device AI does the trick.
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Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size. It's done without consent, it's not visible in the settings, and removing it will reinstall it later.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
Another reason to use Vivaldi web browser.
It is the last mainstream web browser to not bundle an AI.
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@faduda A possible solution might be toggling chrome://settings/system -> On-device AI, although I haven't been able to confirm, as the 4 GB weights.bin file hasn't shown up on my install yet.
And no, this is strictly Google Chrome browser bloat. It doesn't affect Chromium, Edge, Brave, or any of the other Chromium forks as I understand it.
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@atoponce Seems like an easy fix.
"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 "
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@atoponce A gigantic rant but no useful, actionable information. Just like the last time. I'm going to ignore this.
Who's gonna tell him that Microsoft installs silently Copilot on Windows PCs?
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Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size. It's done without consent, it's not visible in the settings, and removing it will reinstall it later.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
@atoponce it's so easy to deactivate it - just uninstall Chrome! You all should have done it long time ago!
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Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size. It's done without consent, it's not visible in the settings, and removing it will reinstall it later.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
@atoponce
> At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane.
this is just blind LLM outrage. Yes it's a waste of storage and network that nobody consented to. It's not guaranteed to make people use more CPU as they have to interact with whatever feature this is going to empower. But it's *only* 4GB.
Please write an article about the climate costs of internet ads. This is about a trillion times more wasteful and nobody consents to it. It wastes so much CPU and you could literally calculate the damage to batteries of mobile devices caused by this unwanted, unsolicited, uninvited compute. -
@rodneylives @mgorny @atoponce
I still have a backup phone like that
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Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size. It's done without consent, it's not visible in the settings, and removing it will reinstall it later.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
@atoponce Is this news? It's over a year old. IIRC, it's designed to reduce the amount of data sent off-machine. They were talking about space consumption in Canary release in Feb of 2025 (https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chrome-ai-dev-preview-discuss/c/PhgjQg4IoQk)
Looking for all the models that have been downloaded for cache in browser, it's not just limited to one. chrome://on-device-internals/
You can use the Tools tab to 'Load Default' model, then type your prompt in the box below. It's slower than a cloud-based response.
Ask 'how to spell "incorriggable" and it takes 2 seconds to spit out: The correct spelling is incorrigible.
Takes 10 more seconds to explain each part of the word.
Then it crashes.
I'd rather handle spell checks on-box than send every word up to a cloud service.
But, don't ask it what the range of radio delay is between the earth and the moon. Highest Quality says 2.5 milliseconds, and crashes. Fastest inference says 22 seconds, and crashes. Not usable.
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Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size. It's done without consent, it's not visible in the settings, and removing it will reinstall it later.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
@atoponce Which OS? Chrome under Linux affected?
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@atoponce Which OS? Chrome under Linux affected?
@tbachner It's not for me which I installed via Flatpak. I've left Chrome running for the past few hours and executed:
% find / -type f -name weights.bin 2> /dev/random
a couple times, with no results.
However, @ferricoxide found it on their machine in ~/.config/google-chrome/
YMMV.
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@tbachner It's not for me which I installed via Flatpak. I've left Chrome running for the past few hours and executed:
% find / -type f -name weights.bin 2> /dev/random
a couple times, with no results.
However, @ferricoxide found it on their machine in ~/.config/google-chrome/
YMMV.
@atoponce@fosstodon.org @tbachner@ruhr.social
Yeah. I'm using an EL9 derivative (via WSL). Looks like I installed the portable installer (i.e., it lives under${HOME}/firefox/) rather than from RPM, though. A little odd for my habits, but I can't remember why I did it that way. -
Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size. It's done without consent, it's not visible in the settings, and removing it will reinstall it later.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
@atoponce AI infra companies cannot seriously get away with pulling shit like this surely
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Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size. It's done without consent, it's not visible in the settings, and removing it will reinstall it later.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
@atoponce question seems to be why? If the weights are sitting on your machine, but the ai functionality is still calling home... Is this some weird distributed AI alternative to building data centres? Using your users processing downtime to answer Gemini queries _elsewhere_?
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Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size. It's done without consent, it's not visible in the settings, and removing it will reinstall it later.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
@atoponce the heck .
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Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size. It's done without consent, it's not visible in the settings, and removing it will reinstall it later.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
@atoponce@fosstodon.orgMy thoughts on this would be to write a script that installs in MBR,
At boot time,
With no date limit,
Forensics Tools...
The script that will block such request in the future.
If you are worried about the coding process, AI is Excellent in the helping. -
Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size. It's done without consent, it's not visible in the settings, and removing it will reinstall it later.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
Feature flag is here: chrome://flags/#prompt-api-for-gemini-nano
When enabled, it powers demos like this: https://chrome.dev/web-ai-demos/prompt-api-playground/
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Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size. It's done without consent, it's not visible in the settings, and removing it will reinstall it later.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
@atoponce Good that we have a healthy browser competition and it’s easy to switch
