Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent | Hacker News

Chrome is expected to auto-download a multi-gigabyte on-device AI model on desktop for its Prompt API.

A Hacker News post says the model is about 2.7 GB on CPU or 4.0 GB on GPU when certain flags are enabled.

Chrome 148 is expected to make this the default, letting webpages use local AI features via the Prompt API and LanguageModel.create().

The change raises concerns about hidden storage and bandwidth use, plus user consent and privacy, since it may happen by default.