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As of 2026, Google maintains an iron grip on the web browser market, boasting well over three billion Chrome users worldwide.
That means even small changes or interruptions can have a significant impact. As security researcher Alexander “The Privacy Guy” Hanff noted in a blog post earlier this week, Google’s web browser has been “silently” installing an AI model on users’ devices without asking for consent.
Hanff discovered a four-gigabyte file named “weights.bin,” in a directory called “OptGuideOnDeviceModel.” The file contains weights — the learned numerical parameters of an AI model that teach it how to weigh the importance of various data points — of Google’s Gemini Nano, which is designed to live on users’ devices, not the cloud.
“Chrome did not ask,” Hanff wrote. “Chrome does not surface it. If the user deletes it, Chrome re-downloads it.”
Plenty of questions remain over the implications of the download or how it affects the performance of users’ devices beyond taking up a hefty amount of storage. But considering the lack of transparency — and massively growing AI backlash — it’s certainly not a good look.
Google has remained unusually silent on the matter, and has yet to publicly address it. The company didn’t respond to Futurism‘s request for comment.
Hanff argued that given the browser’s billions of users, deploying the AI model could release “between six thousand and sixty thousand tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, depending on how many devices receive the push.”
Netizens, who have long grown wary of having AI pushed on them without their consent, were appalled.
“AI/Climate aside, my real issue is that Google installs anything without my consent no matter the size,” one Reddit user wrote. “Thankfully I don’t use Chrome, it’s Firefox for me.”
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