Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.
It would be in the same order of magnitude as the 4 gigabytes of space it uses. I’m assuming it’s some local AI assistant or something, but I haven’t looked at the code.
What’s it for? My main concern is that when it’s used it’s gonna eat up even more memory.
It would be in the same order of magnitude as the 4 gigabytes of space it uses. I’m assuming it’s some local AI assistant or something, but I haven’t looked at the code.