Google Chrome is silently installing a local LLM on your computer that is 4 gigabytes in size.

[atoponce@fosstodon.org]

@msbellows I believe the toggle is chrome://settings/system "On-device AI".

I can't confirm this though, as in my testing on Linux, I haven't been able to locate the "weights.bin" download and no directory size supports that 4 GB download.

So either I haven't waited long enough to download it (it's been over an hour at this point), or it's not applicable to Linux.

[atoponce@fosstodon.org]

@6al AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/UserData/OptGuideOnDeviceModel/ is the directory.

I believe chrome://settings/system -> On-device AI is the toggle for this, but I can't confirm as I haven't seen the download reach my system yet.

[bontchev@infosec.exchange]

@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?

[ferricoxide@blahaj.zone]

@atoponce@fosstodon.org

On the plus side, looks like it's smaller on Linux:

find ~ \
  -type f \
  -name "weights.bin" 2> /dev/null | \
xargs stat -c '%s' | \
awk '{
  sum += $1
} END {
  printf "%.2f GiB\n", sum / (1024^3)
}'
2.67 GiB

[atoponce@fosstodon.org]

@ferricoxide I still haven't seen it show up in my home dir. What's the directory path for you?

[ferricoxide@blahaj.zone]

@atoponce@fosstodon.org

${HOME}/.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel/2025.8.21.1028/weights.bin

[atoponce@fosstodon.org]

@ferricoxide Thanks. It appears to be ~/.var/app/com.google.Chrome/config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel/ for me as I have it installed via Flatpak, but the weights.bin file hasn't showed up yet.

I wonder if Flatpak is getting in the way here, or if it's getting installed somewhere else.

[faduda@mastodon.ie]

@atoponce So outside of uninstalling Chrome, what's the solution here?
And does it affect other Chrone-based browsers?

[atoponce@fosstodon.org]

@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.

[ryan@bemrose.social]

@0461fcbecc4c3374439932d6b8f11269ccdb7cc973ad7a50ae362db135a474dd @atoponce

Your sarcasm is noted. But it's also misplaced. In the article, the author points out that the obvious AI entry points in the browser (the toolbar AI button and the omnibar) don't even use the local model. They still send your queries to Google.

So you've got a ton of wasted bandwidth and storage space, no consent, no user action, no respect for user preferences (eg: deleting the file), and no privacy benefit because they route everything you type through the Google cloud anyway.

[ryan@bemrose.social]

@0461fcbecc4c3374439932d6b8f11269ccdb7cc973ad7a50ae362db135a474dd @atoponce I'll allow that it's clickbait (most every tech news article is these days). But how is it misinformation?

[ferricoxide@blahaj.zone]

@atoponce@fosstodon.org

No clue. I only looked in ~ because the only other locations my user would be able to write to would be /tmp or /var/tmp (which would be a bad place for Chrome to try to write to since those tend to be smaller partitions than /home normally is (whether /home is a standalone partition or part of `/)

[jonfr600@mastodon.social]

@atoponce I can confirm this on my PC. I am removing Google Chrome now.

[naturemc@mastodon.online]

@atoponce Time for #degoogle and #diday !

#Google

[w6kme@mastodon.radio]

@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 "

[johnkavs@mastodon.ie]

@atoponce what about Chromium?

[atoponce@fosstodon.org]

@johnkavs It's unaffected. This is only Google Chrome bloat.

[n4ch1sm0@mastodon.social]

@atoponce Just in case someone wasn't already convinced they should dump Google Chrome for fucking good

[tomtom@pouet.chapril.org]

@ferricoxide @atoponce what's the point of using Chrome ? I mean if I use Microsoft I will get a lot shit from Microsoft... No surprise there.

[johnkavs@mastodon.ie]

@atoponce not enough people know about Chromium, which Google were forced to create through anti-monopoly pressure