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’m trying to understand why there’s so much angry energy here. Some of my colleagues work in research and none of them come across as an AI evangelist, not even close. Even more, there are a lot of valid concerns coming from them, from copyright infringements to privacy to accuracy. In engineering, there’s that, plus security, and above all, cost. Training and running models is extremely expensive and it may not even yield the desired results.
Started with neural networks around 2000, more recently latent diffusion models. Knowledge of art goes back two decades before that. Now stop sealioning - I’m not gonna respond to anything else you say unless its to admit you’re wrong. If you intend to keep lying, shut up instead
I didn’t say anything that was wrong. In fact, I just asked you a perfectly reasonable question about this model bundled in Chrome, and then you went haywire.
So, is McDonald’s bad for the environment? Sure it is. But food goes to feed people. How much do you think diffusion generated images are worth, compared to a cow? And oil companies, they are definitely bad for the environment as well, and turns out 40% of the energy consumed by data centers comes from natural gas. If we assume that demand drives production, then we should agree that data centers should minimize the use of gas. By the way, 4% of the total energy production in the US goes to power these data centers, see https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-know-about-energy-use-at-us-data-centers-amid-the-ai-boom/. I would say that if we could reduce that number by cutting off AI clip art generation, it would be a net win for everyone.
You work for an AI company and can see no good coming from AI? What?
Is AI your field of work or research? Genuinely curious.
Literally decades of experience in both AI and art
What fields, specifically?
I’m trying to understand why there’s so much angry energy here. Some of my colleagues work in research and none of them come across as an AI evangelist, not even close. Even more, there are a lot of valid concerns coming from them, from copyright infringements to privacy to accuracy. In engineering, there’s that, plus security, and above all, cost. Training and running models is extremely expensive and it may not even yield the desired results.
So what’s your angle here?
Started with neural networks around 2000, more recently latent diffusion models. Knowledge of art goes back two decades before that. Now stop sealioning - I’m not gonna respond to anything else you say unless its to admit you’re wrong. If you intend to keep lying, shut up instead
I didn’t say anything that was wrong. In fact, I just asked you a perfectly reasonable question about this model bundled in Chrome, and then you went haywire.
Regardless, I’m no AI researcher, and I suspect that you aren’t either, so I asked you to specify because I could tell that “art” is doing some really heavy lifting here, in the sense that you seem to think that AI can “create” art that is, in any way or form, important or innovative enough to justify its energy usage or the ramifications of it, like the increased cost in wholesale electricity, and thus electricity bills, see https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-center-power-demands-are-contributing-to-higher-energy-bills and https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-electricity-prices/
So, is McDonald’s bad for the environment? Sure it is. But food goes to feed people. How much do you think diffusion generated images are worth, compared to a cow? And oil companies, they are definitely bad for the environment as well, and turns out 40% of the energy consumed by data centers comes from natural gas. If we assume that demand drives production, then we should agree that data centers should minimize the use of gas. By the way, 4% of the total energy production in the US goes to power these data centers, see https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-know-about-energy-use-at-us-data-centers-amid-the-ai-boom/. I would say that if we could reduce that number by cutting off AI clip art generation, it would be a net win for everyone.
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