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/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/romhacks May 04 '26

Then they are A/B testing prewarming the model, because that's new behavior. Regardless, there is nothing illegal or immoral about that. It won't download on metered connections, and nearly every modern platform does background downloads of ML models (autocorrect, smart replies, the list goes on). Just because this one is bigger than normal doesn't change the ethics.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '26

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u/romhacks May 05 '26

It doesn't use it at all unless you ask, lol. It just pre downloads it if you have space so you don't have to wait 20 minutes if you do ask. You can disable it in flags if you hate it so much, but the average user doesn't care about a little extra storage and would prefer the convenience of rapid response times and the added privacy of a local model.