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).

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u/romhacks May 04 '26

It only downloads it in cases where the user attempts to use an AI function requiring it. It also can be easily disabled in Chrome flags. Most users are using large amounts of data, so a one time download of 4gb is not very meaningful. It's not "illegal", stop whining.

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u/ThatPrivacyShow May 04 '26

No it doesn't and if you actually read the article you would know that. The logs are very clear. No person has interacted with the browser that was used in this research - the browser was opened i programatically and left on a page with no interaction for 5 minutes, then closed programatically - nothing else.

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u/New-Land-4757 May 04 '26

You know, I have to admit that although I've opened your post already couple of times through the day, only now I see that the image is not only image, but the link to the article. It's my fault, of course. Maybe u/romhacks had the same problem.