A few weeks ago I noticed some mysterious app was killing my (poor) internet downloading a large file.

It was chrome, downloading a multi GB file without any sort of UI hints that it was doing so. A generative AI file.

Is this why chrome uses so much ram? They’ve just been pushing up the memory usage in preparation for this day, hoping I wouldn’t notice the extra software now running on my (old, outdated) system?

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satvikpendem 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's an AI model file, part of an upcoming local AI API. It can be very useful for on-device AI though, stuff like parsing and analyzing text from an image such as a receipt of groceries, which is actually an app I'm making currently, so it helps if everyone has such a model.

	▲	moregrist 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It would be absolutely lovely if Google asked users to opt-in rather than force a large file download on them. I’m going to attribute this to stupidity instead of malice, but it’s pretty much the height of SV arrogance to assume that unannounced multi-GB files are okay for any purpose, let alone generative AI that the user hasn’t opted into. Some people still have shitty internet and/or bandwidth caps.

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g947o 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is why I use Firefox. In case where I have to use something chromium based (because Cloudflare hates Firefox, apparently), I use Brave.

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Retr0id 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Firefox also downloads and uses AI models: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/on-device-models

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fc417fc802 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't believe it ever does so without first asking for permission?

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fady0 8 hours ago | parent [-]

It did it without my permission, it's a small model to rename and group tabs, though, no more than 50M in size.

	▲	fragmede 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		wait, hang on, I can't be the only person with 300 tabs open for whom that would actually be useful

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mghackerlady 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Use seamonkey or palemoon

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nehal3m 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Interesting. Do you have more specifics? I don't use Chrome or it's derivatives, but this is the first I've heard of it doing that.

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senko 16 hours ago | parent [-]

Chrome can run small[0] models and can auto-download them: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/built-in

[0] "small" in comparison to ChatGPT, but still a bulky download

	▲	adzm 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, seems to be about 4gb or so in disk space for the models in my situation.

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princevegeta89 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Don't ever use Chrome. Go for Brave or Vivaldi, they're far better than Chrome.

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tapland 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Doesn’t Brave has their own ‘Leo’ AI built in?

	▲	princevegeta89 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah but I never use it. Also you can disable it easily.

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anthk 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Those are propietary, actually as worse as Chrome if not more.