Google Chrome dominates the global browser market on desktop and mobile — only Apple’s Safari makes a dent. That’s why the silent installation of a 4GB AI file on every user’s device suddenly created such a furor. And it’s why a quiet change to the settings for billions of Chrome users now threatens to do the same.
The 4GB AI download was spotted by privacy advocate Alexander Hanff. The weights.bin file is used to power on-device Gemini Nano, but “Chrome did not ask. Chrome does not surface it. If the user deletes it, Chrome re-downloads it.”
Hanff has now flagged another issue first disclosed on Reddit. Until now, Chrome’s on-device AI toggle “lived inside the System block and carried the following description: ‘Without sending your data to Google servers.’” That has now changed.
“The assurance is gone. The sentence promising that the model runs locally without sending user data to Google’s servers has been deleted from the Settings UI.” Hanff warns the implications are dire.” I want to be blunt. There are only three plausible reasons for a billion-user vendor to remove a specific privacy claim from a product surface, and each of them is a serious problem.”
“Was the previous text inaccurate?” Hanff asks. “Has the architecture changed? Was the wording withdrawn on legal advice.” These are questions for regulators.
Hanff also notes that “the toggle has been moved out of the System block and given a dedicated section, which has the secondary effect of visually decoupling it from the surrounding device controls and reducing the chance that an ordinary user notices the change at all.” Thus the secretive nature of the change.
Google has now responded, per The Register, to say nothing material has changed. “The edit to the “On-device AI” message occurred in early April. According to Google, Gemini Nano in Chrome processes all data on-device.”
In other words, nothing to see here. Google also responded to Hanff’s viral 4GB AI file report, a response that Hanff has dismissed as gaslighting. We await to see if/how he responds to Google this time around.
