Security experts recently exposed the existence of unauthorized hidden behaviors in Google Chrome browser.Without the user's knowledge, approximately 4GB of Gemini Nano AI model files were secretly downloaded and the built-in AI API was run.According to reports, Zephyrianna revealed that Chrome will automatically download a file named weight.bin in the background and store it in the C:UsersAppDataLocalGoogleChromeUser DataOptGuideOnDeviceModel directory.
After analysis, it was confirmed that the file is a Gemini Nano AI model, used to support the browser's built-in AI function, and the entire process was without user consent.
This behavior of cutting first and playing later not only takes up a lot of disk space for no reason, but for computers with lower hardware specifications, it may also slow down the running efficiency of the browser because the model is loaded in the background.
Not only that, the file is read-only, and even if it is deleted manually, Chrome will download it again the next time it is started.
Google has not officially responded to this matter yet. Users can enter "chrome://flags/" in the Chrome address bar, search for and disable the two experimental flags "Enables Optimization Guide On Device" and "Prompt API", and then manually clear the weight.bin file.