[brody_hamer]

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up the memory usage in preparation for this day, hoping I wouldn’t notice the extra software now running on my (old, outdated) system?

[satvikpendem]

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]

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.

[g947o]

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

[Retr0id]

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

[nehal3m]

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.

[senko]

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

[princevegeta89]

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

[tapland]

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

[anthk]

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