Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.
Breaking news, people use the internet for things, it emits carbon, carbon is bad. AI is not a factor in this equation.
The article is far more than just “Chrome downloaded something”. And they want you to think exactly what you thought, this isn’t AI related at all, nothing to see here.