FYI: Google Chrome Silently Installs a 4 GB AI Model On Your Device

[A_Woman_from_MI]

Just a heads up for anyone using chrome and unaware of the stealthy download

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/gemini/articles/google-chrome-silently-installs-4-164550734.html

The scale becomes staggering when you consider Chrome’s massive user base. This silent installation across hundreds of millions of devices represents carbon emissions equivalent to thousands of cars running for an entire year—all for AI features most users will never discover.

Manual removal triggers automatic re-download, revealing this wasn’t an accident.

Delete the weights.bin file manually and Chrome treats your choice like a system error to be corrected. The browser automatically re-downloads the model on next launch, because apparently your 4GB of storage belongs to Google’s AI roadmap now.

[Miguelito Loveless]

1. Why I am scraping all of my PCs

of anything using AI. Also, running older Windows on Linux VMs, using older software packages I already own. Screw this subscription noise.

[Passages]

2. Disgusting and should be illegal.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Removing Chrome altogether added 320hp to my system

There are alternatives. Zoom stalled all the time.

[hunter]

4. Enshitification nearly complete.

I quit recommending Chrome and ChromeOS some time ago and have recently transitioned to actively rejecting it.