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.
I hate the idea of AI agents on my phone without my consent. So this is definitely fucked up. And fuck google in general.
But the power consumption argument makes little sense. That’s like downloading one movie in 1080p.