Google Chrome Installed a 4GB AI Model on Your PC

hhaebom about 4 hours ago 12 commentsRead Article on oztalking.com

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Discussion (12 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

jrflo•about 3 hours ago

Ever since IO earlier this year when google showed their AI strategy I switched to firefox and duckduckgo and couldn't be happier with the decision. I am by no means anti-AI but users should be able to choose when they want to use these tools, google seems to want to shove it down everyone's throat.

encomiast•about 3 hours ago

Did a similar thing, but went with Kagi + Orion. Also happy to have a few more free cycles from not thinking about Google.

sheept•about 3 hours ago

Any page can silently trigger an additional multi-gigabyte download for Chrome users by just calling this API:

    await LanguageModel.create()

Since the model is installed once per browser, LanguageModel.availability() could probably also be used for fingerprinting.

tantalor•about 3 hours ago

Indeed, you could even do something like this:

    await fetch("/multi-gigabyte-download");

It even works on non-Chrome browsers.

bstsb•about 3 hours ago

i think the point is that one actually burns disk space, while the other is just a nuisance for people on plans with limited data

gruez•about 2 hours ago

You can store up to 80% of free disk space with indexeddb

https://rxdb.info/articles/indexeddb-max-storage-limit.html

DennisAleynikov•about 2 hours ago

using a browser is an easy way to burn disk space and limited data

light browsing is not a thing unless you somehow ensure javascript is disabled and all downloads are blocked

bri3d•about 3 hours ago

Just the availability wouldn't be that bad from a fingerprinting standpoint (getting one bit that a majority of Chrome users have is just the same bits you already have, usually), except, it also exposes whether the underlying hardware is "eligible," and once it's running, you can also benchmark the language model performance. It's a mess. I think it might also be broken and work in iframes, which would be an even bigger mess; there are a few bug reports suggesting this although many of them look like slop.

This feature was massively bungled; I actually don't overall hate the idea of it (having a shared, pre-downloaded model that can run effectively from JS is kind of awesome versus sites downloading stuff into LocalStorage to use with hacked up wasm/webgl inference engines), but it really, really needed a permissions dialog and a proper anti-fingerprinting model.

tantalor•about 3 hours ago

> really needed a permissions dialog

Why?

bri3d•about 2 hours ago

Users with data caps are an obvious reason, for example, see this frustrated user report here: https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/415181794/chrome-al... .

To your point about `fetch` in the sibling comment; yes, I would also be annoyed by a website which downloaded 4GB in the background without asking me, too.

I don't think this is some moral outrage, to be clear; it's well within Google's rights, it doesn't seem "sketchy" at all, and it is kind of a cool feature, but it feels like they could have done a lot better by just making it opt-in and a little less fingerprintable.

guilhermeasper•about 3 hours ago

IMO If you're into tech and still use Chrome*, that's on you. If you are not, you probably don't really care unless you need extra space on your PC.

*Except in your job, since you probably obligated to use.

comboy•about 3 hours ago

Switched from firefox few months ago, I don't like google, but firefox has only few percent of market share currenly, many pages simply do not work properly with it, plus it has bugs on macos (like onmousover stuff), which simply make it unusable. Safari is fine, but also many websites (which sometimes you need to use like banking or gov) are not tested on it. The overall browsers situation is less than ideal.

dinkleberg•about 3 hours ago

That is weird, I've daily driven firefox for the better part of a decade (aside from when my employers have required chrome) and seldom encounter issues. I'm curious where you're hitting these. In fact, since ublock origin got removed from Chrome, the experience is far better on firefox.

Also, if everyone chooses to not use firefox because it has low market share, it'll remain low market share forever.

gpm•about 3 hours ago

> many pages simply do not work properly with it, plus it has bugs on macos (like onmousover stuff),

I use firefox on mac and I have simply no clue what you're talking about. Tons of people use firefox on mac quite successfully...

The only page that I know of that doesn't work is google earth - it doesn't work on linux either. (Technically it does, just incredibly laggy compared to chrome)

I can't think of a single macos specific bug. Or a single mouse over related bug.

jackb4040•about 3 hours ago

I think it's a stretch to call firefox on mac "unusable". Like once a month I'll have something not work, and half the time it also doesn't work in chromium (both are the developer's fault). And when it does work in chromium, browsers are free so just switch over there and switch back. And to top it off, there are endless free flavors of chromium like brave etc, that virtually never have compatibility issues without needing to go full google.

maccard•about 3 hours ago

I’ve been a daily Firefox user on macOS and windows for a decade. I can count on one hand the number of sites that don’t work.

What sites do you have in mind?

werdnapk•about 3 hours ago

I have been using Firefox for years (decades) and I rarely encounter a page or site that doesn't work... a handful perhaps, but it's a complete non-issue for me. If anything, my ad-blocker can sometimes cause issues and I'll disable that and everything is good again.

bornfreddy•about 2 hours ago

> ...many pages simply do not work properly with it,...

Using Google's websites much, are we? FF works great everywhere except there. I think the official term for the bugs on these pages is "oops"...

I use FF everywhere except on G pages, where I use Brave.

404mm•about 3 hours ago

Technically speaking, Safari is the second most used browser. It’s quite surprising how often I get these “unsupported browser” popups. I still use it as my primary and have FF as a backup. No Chrome needed.

ngetchell•about 3 hours ago

Don't be so dramatic. Firefox on macOS is perfectly usable.

nickthegreek•about 3 hours ago

daily drive Zen on macos with zero issues and quality adblocking support.

cdmckay•about 3 hours ago

Really? I use Firefox as my personal browser and everything works fine, including Google sites. Very rarely there’s a government site that needs Chrome, but I definitely wouldn’t say it’s “many” sites.

intellectronica•about 3 hours ago

In their defense, it's an astonishingly good model for this size and you can use it for all sorts of cool stuff.

Little demo of using this local model to inject AI into a page with a monkeyscript: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPi33D8DoQ0&t=3000s

DennisAleynikov•about 3 hours ago

yeah I'm lowkey pissed off people keep insulting google for giving them an offline version of coding enabled wikipedia that they get literally 0 data analytics from (just turn your wifi and ethernet off and use it offline after downloading it)

what part of the 4Gb file offended people?

the fact that ai runs on the edge reliably now?

ecommerceguy•about 3 hours ago

Memory prices will adjust accordingly as this becomes the norm.

ghurtado•about 3 hours ago

> yeah I'm lowkey pissed off people keep insulting google

This is the kind of bootlicker that will usher in the new distopia.

Thanks

DennisAleynikov•about 2 hours ago

you're welcome for the total lack of reading comprehension on your part.

the edgy kids all hate google we get it but how the fk is a free offline ai model even a bad thing for privacy or even benefitting google in any way other than giving away privacy preserving tech for free

they obviously aren't good intentioned here, and benefit from the aggregate of data but OpenAI and Anthropic might as well be enemies of all humanity given they contribute nothing back to the knowledge that is useable offline without their exorbitant api costs

google should be better about their more evil tendencies but they now have sufficient competition that bootlicking is not an important thing to point out in the fight over open source(ish) models that allow people more freedom not less

its all moot when nobody can afford hardware in the first place that can run ai models so I guess I'm just yelling into the void here

ghurtado•about 3 hours ago

That does nothing to defend Google since the quality of the model is irrelevant to the accusation.

imnes•about 1 hour ago

The accusation that they pushed a new feature to Chrome users? They do that all the time? Why is this one alarming / needs special consent?

expedition32•about 3 hours ago

You'd think that if a technology is so good you don't need to force it on people.

scottyah•33 minutes ago

It's not forced on people, get a grip. It's a free feature on a free browser, just like all the other features.

ghurtado•about 3 hours ago

It certainly shouldn't require masses of blank eyed fans all making highly emotional pleads to protect the sensitivity of their favorite logo.

That's gross even by Microsoft standards.

maxloh•about 3 hours ago

To prevent Chrome from automatically downloading the model, go to Settings → On-device AI.

taf2•about 3 hours ago

i love the built in AI - i created this tic tac toe game with an AI trash talking opponent -> https://taf2.github.io/ai-tic-tac-toe-trash-talk/

Banditoz•about 3 hours ago

The page uses 10% of my CPU while doing nothing on it.

rvnx•about 2 hours ago

At least no regrets purchasing that expensive CPU and the solar panels

DennisAleynikov•about 2 hours ago

wait till you open my website, it will crash your GPU just from rendering the fractal

elorant•about 3 hours ago

I removed the model and then removed Chrome too. Good effing riddance.

skybrian•about 3 hours ago

This looks like AI-written blather, but it links to an article with useful information by someone who actually checked:

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/gemini/articles/fact-check-google-...

ghurtado•about 3 hours ago

If you had bothered reading the article you would realize you only provided redundant information.

rvnx•about 2 hours ago

Thanks! Very informative. Lot of new details including the answer from Google and several experiments

ChrisArchitect•about 4 hours ago

Story from May;

Discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48019219

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050964

haebom•about 4 hours ago

So, Did Google respond?

kccqzy•about 3 hours ago

Google’s PR team is so bad at managing their reputation that their response wouldn’t have mattered. Apple can download a 4GB Apple Intelligence model onto your phone (which likely has lower storage than your PC) without any controversy; Google cannot.

SurprisedTiger•about 3 hours ago

In the only way they know how :-)