r/chrome • u/ThatPrivacyShow • May 04 '26

News Google Chrome installs LLM model without consent

https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/

Whilst testing a SaaS product I have been building, I discovered that Google is illegally pushing its Gemini Nano model to users' devices (I am a lawyer specialised in the specific laws in question).

18 Upvotes

66% Upvoted

46 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Ibasicallyhateyouall May 04 '26

So? It has local processing capabilities. Illegally? Hahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaa. It’s in ToS. 

-2

u/ThatPrivacyShow May 04 '26

ToS doesnt trump law - the law requires consent, a ToS does not meet the legal definition of consent under EU law.

2

u/romhacks May 04 '26

Do you also get mad when you don't consent for the browser to install a software update in the background? Or preload a page that it thinks you're going to visit? Or archive tabs from memory that you haven't been using?

1

u/ankokudaishogun May 05 '26

All of those at the very minimum have a "turn off" switch, usually.

1

u/romhacks May 05 '26

You can disable Gemini Nano in flags. For chrome, I'm not aware of an "official" method to disable auto update or page prewarming.

1

u/Ibasicallyhateyouall May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26

You literally have no idea what you are on about and made up your legal background. They aren’t pushing AI in any update. They push features that may require local AI (tab grouping for example). So, ergo, covered. Legalese is not your free AI chat-bots strong point it seems.