{"id":209780,"date":"2026-05-06T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/06\/google-chrome-is-downloading-a-4gb-ai-model-onto-your-device-without-consent-researcher-warns\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T14:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T18:40:11","slug":"google-chrome-is-downloading-a-4gb-ai-model-onto-your-device-without-consent-researcher-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/06\/google-chrome-is-downloading-a-4gb-ai-model-onto-your-device-without-consent-researcher-warns\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Chrome Is Downloading a 4GB AI Model Onto Your Device Without Consent, Researcher Warns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/google-chrome-is-downloading-a-4gb-ai-model-onto-your-device-without-consent-researcher-warns-2000755201\">Google Chrome Is Downloading a 4GB AI Model Onto Your Device Without Consent, Researcher Warns<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/google-chrome-is-downloading-a-4gb-ai-model-onto-your-device-without-consent-researcher-warns-2000755201\">https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/google-chrome-is-downloading-a-4gb-ai-model-onto-your-device-without-consent-researcher-warns-2000755201<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-06 14:30:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"gizmodo.com\">gizmodo.com<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Security researcher Alexander Hanff reported that Google Chrome has been quietly storing an on-device AI model called Gemini Nano without explicit user consent.<\/li>\n<li>The stored AI model, which can occupy around 4GB of space, is found in a folder named OptGuideOnDeviceModel, with the main file being weights.bin.<\/li>\n<li>Google Chrome does not offer any prompt to agree to install themodel nor provides an opt-out or removal option, but it can be manually deleted although it will redownload the next time Chrome restarts.<\/li>\n<li>Google clarified that this model is used for on-device security features like scam detection and developer APIs, and that a feature to turn off and remove it was introduced in February.<\/li>\n<li>Although not new, this discovery has caused renewed discussions in various online communities about the presence and management of this AI model.<\/li>\n<li>Users can check for this AI model by entering \u201cchrome:\/\/on-device-internals\u201d in their Chrome browser; they can also opt out via the Chrome settings menu if available.<\/li>\n<li>Workarounds exist to prevent automatic re-download, such as disabling AI-related features through \u201cchrome:\/\/flags\u201d or changing the file permissions of weights.bin.<\/li>\n<li>Removing the AI model from Chrome may cause some browser functionality to malfunction, and will disable all associated AI-powered features.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google Chrome Is Downloading a 4GB AI Model Onto Your Device Without Consent, Researcher Warns&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":209781,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/01\/chrome_AI-1200x675.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209780"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209783,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209780\/revisions\/209783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}