this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. (www.thatprivacyguy.com)
submitted 2 days ago by sanitation@lemmy.radio to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 180 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The AI Mode pill in the Chrome 147 omnibox is a cloud-backed Search Generative Experience surface - every query the user types into it is sent over the network to Google's servers for processing by Google's hosted models. The on-device Nano model is not invoked by the AI Mode UI flow at all. They are entirely separate code paths - the most visible AI affordance in the browser does not use the local model the user has been silently given, and the features that do use the local model (Help-Me-Write in , tab-group AI suggestions, smart paste, page summary) are buried in textarea-context menus and tab-group right-click menus that the average user will discover, on average, never.

What a double kick to the dick. First, they silently download 4gb to your disk, and they still fucking send your shit to their cloud AI.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

4GB is now a Nano model?

[–] Kissaki@feddit.org 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's probably a typo and supposed to be Nanu. In German, nanu is an expression of surprise. This model's slogan is "Nanu, wo kommt das denn her?" meaning "Huh, where did this come from?".

[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's interesting. It's an "old man" way of saying "nani?!" in Japanese.

[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 8 points 1 day ago

Was Mork attempting a surprised German, an elderly Japanese man, or some strange third thing?

vintage t-shirt graphic of robin William’s smirking framed by a ludicrous amount of blow-dried hair wearing a Lycra onesie and holding up a lewd alien gesture captioned “nanu nanu!” and bearing the trademark “mork and Mindy” television show logo in a garish vignette and matching font of cliched mid-70s tobacco stain-colored banded gradient

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 9 points 2 days ago

>cloud-backed Search Generative Experience surface

😡🤢🤮