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 weeks ago by sanitation@lemmy.radio to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] tomatolung@lemmy.world 46 points 2 weeks ago (40 children)

So we now have a four-way evidence chain - macOS kernel filesystem events, Chrome's own per-profile state, Chrome's runtime feature flags, and Google's component-updater logs - all four agreeing on the same conduct, and the conduct is: a 4 GB AI model arrived on this user's disk without consent, without notice, on a profile that received zero human input, in a window of 14 minutes and 28 seconds, on a Tuesday afternoon.

[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago (34 children)

How do we uninstall or block the download?

[–] livligkinkajou@slrpnk.net 49 points 2 weeks ago (18 children)

Uninstall chrome

[–] turboSnail@piefed.europe.pub 5 points 2 weeks ago

And install Firefox or one of its many forks.

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