Article

2026-05-08 Cyber

Chrome silently installs a 4 GB local LLM on your computer

[Register] You did remember to opt out of AI, didn't you?

Google Chrome will steal 4 GB of disk space from your computer for its local large language model unless you opted out.

It's called weights.bin and it's stored in a folder called OptGuideOnDeviceModel. What's more, if you track down the file and delete it, Chrome will download a fresh copy and reinstate it.

The discovery was announced this week by Alexander Hanff, who blogs as "the Privacy Guy," in a somewhat sensationally titled blog post: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane.

It doesn't seem to be new, though: there are signs that Chrome has been doing this for quite some time. In April 2025, this Reddit post suggests the model was "just" 3 GB, but a Stack Overflow question says that by November 2025 it was already up to 4 GB. We would not be at all surprised if soon it went to five.

This the what Google calls the "Nano" version of its Gemini local LLM, which powers its Prompt API. That page links to general info about Google's Gemini LLM, but the site about its use on Android has some specific info about Gemini Nano.

The Reg FOSS desk is an unapologetic AI skeptic and disabled every option they could find pertaining to AI usage in Chrome as early as possible, and as far as we can see, we did not have the local model installed on any of our computers.

For instance, on our increasingly geriatric iMac, we checked with this macOS terminal command: find ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome -size +1G -ls 2>/dev/null

We also searched the entire C: drive of a ThinkPad reinstalled with Windows 10 IoT LTSC last year and there was no weights.bin anywhere.

If you didn't opt out, Google has some info on how to disable it. In brief: in Chrome's address box, enter the special URL chrome://flags. In the resulting page, look for an entry named optimization-guide-on-device-model and set it to Disabled, then restart Chrome. The browser should then delete the weights.bin file.

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Posted by badanov 2026-05-08 00:00|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [1848 views ] Top

1 What are they (Google) doing? MAYBE they intend to use the whole world's computers 'idle' moments as resources for their use.
A zillion new computers ripe for the picking. Cheaper than a shiny new data center.
GOOGLE didn't drop the 'DON'T BE EVIL' tag for no reason.
This conspiracy theory originated by me/myself/mine this day ay 4:08 AM.

Posted by Whiskey Mike 2026-05-08 04:10|| 2026-05-08 04:10|| Front Page Top

2 Yes, koffee on the keyboard. The most appropriate Rolex of graphics.

Posted by Besoeker 2026-05-08 04:30|| 2026-05-08 04:30|| Front Page Top

3 BRAVE on Ubuntu

What are the differences between Leo's AI Models?

Posted by Skidmark 2026-05-08 07:59|| 2026-05-08 07:59|| Front Page Top

4 Not finding anything so far on Mac Brave ... Lots of files, but no directory.

Brave 1.89.145 (Official Build) (arm64)
Chromium: 147.0.7727.137

Posted by ChicagoNorth 2026-05-08 08:55|| 2026-05-08 08:55|| Front Page Top

5 Sigh ... Lots of [weight.bin] files; no [OptGuideOnDeviceModel] directory.

Flag WAS set and has now been disabled

Posted by ChicagoNorth 2026-05-08 09:03|| 2026-05-08 09:03|| Front Page Top

6 I don't know which is worse, Google or Microsoft. But if your OS is Windows and your browser is Chrome you are double screwed.

I have heard that the Brave web browser is based on Chrome. I hope that doesn't mean that Brave is compromised.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2026-05-08 13:50|| 2026-05-08 13:50|| Front Page Top

7 I like Brave.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2026-05-08 13:50|| 2026-05-08 13:50|| Front Page Top

8 On my Android smart phone, Google AI keeps trying to get my attention and I keep telling it to go away. But, because Android is Google, I cannot uninstall it. Wish I could get plain old Linux on a smart phone. I like Linux.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2026-05-08 13:58|| 2026-05-08 13:58|| Front Page Top

9 PureOS – a pure Linux phone experience

Posted by Skidmark 2026-05-08 14:11|| 2026-05-08 14:11|| Front Page Top

10 Whiskey Mike - I cracked that code, it is called:

API-Accessible Distributed Compute Networks

It allow developers to rent, orchestrate, and utilize (or STEAL!) computing power (CPUs/GPUs) spread across multiple, often decentralized, locations via standard web protocols. These platforms, such as Akash Network and Distributive Compute Protocol (DCP), enable parallel processing and high-performance computing on-demand, often at a lower cost than traditional public clouds.

Posted by mossomo 2026-05-08 14:42|| 2026-05-08 14:42|| Front Page Top

11 Brave has chromium under the hood. =(

Posted by mossomo 2026-05-08 14:45|| 2026-05-08 14:45|| Front Page Top

12 I disabled it immediately upon install. Saw AI and opted out like I always do.

Posted by Silentbrick 2026-05-08 17:07|| 2026-05-08 17:07|| Front Page Top

13 Mossomo, great job! Sad that I might have been right.

Posted by Whiskey Mike 2026-05-08 17:22|| 2026-05-08 17:22|| Front Page Top

14 JD Vance holds chilling closed-door summit with America's most powerful men as horrifying global threat menacing hospitals spirals

Posted by Skidmark 2026-05-08 17:48|| 2026-05-08 17:48|| Front Page Top

15 Kudos,mossomo.

Posted by trailing wife 2026-05-08 19:27|| 2026-05-08 19:27|| Front Page Top

15:51 DarthVader
15:32 NoMoreBS
14:32 badanov
14:26 Silentbrick
14:10 chris
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13:48 Bugs the Wicked6167
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13:09 DarthVader
12:57 Grom the Reflective
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11:57 Bobby
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