If you use Google’s Chrome browser for the desktop, there’s probably a Gemini Nano AI model running on your computer right now and it’s taking up about 4 GB of space. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you didn’t know about it and don’t want it, there is a way to turn it off.
The file started downloading automatically for Chrome users in 2024 after Google built Gemini Nano into the browser. But The Privacy Guy’s report this week and the subsequent reception it received highlighted just how many users were unaware—perhaps the result of a flurry of AI services and features across the tech industry that were difficult for users to keep up with.
To extract the Gemini Nano file, open Chrome on your computer, in the upper right corner click on the button “more” menu represented by three straight dotsthen go to Settings, The programthen change “AI on the device” to be off. The Privacy Guy article noted that if you directly extract the Gemini Nano file from the directory, Chrome will silently, automatically re-download it the next time the browser restarts.
A Google spokesperson tells WIRED that the company began rolling out On-device AI in February so that users can turn off features if they choose and remove the model. “Once disabled, the model will no longer download or update,” the spokesperson said in a statement. The company also added, that the system is designed so Gemini Nano “will automatically power off when the device is low on resources.”
Google has built a model in Chrome to enable AI features to detect fraud on the device. It is also intended to provide a way for developers to integrate AI-related applications while keeping data on users’ devices when possible and outside of the cloud. These features are separate from Chrome’s AI Mode, which does not use the Gemini Nano’s local model.
Parisa Tabriz, Chrome’s general manager, emphasized in a post on X on Wednesday that the Gemini Nano integration “has key security capabilities like device-based fraud detection and developer APIs without sending your data to the cloud.”
Google indeed announced the integration of Gemini Nano in Chrome and discussed it publicly, but for users who use Chrome because it is the largest browser in the world, the most visible and do not follow all the granular updates, the lack of notice in your face about the large file of the AI model that sits and works on your computer can be annoying.
Longtime security and compliance consultant Davi Ottenheimer says he follows Chrome updates closely but could have easily missed the Gemini Nano integration. “The model on the device can be a hidden dungeon,” he says. And the fact that Google introduced integration in 2024 but didn’t start rolling out the settings controls for users to turn it off until February shows that, at least initially, this feature wasn’t considered something users would interact with.
Because you it can be remove Gemini Nano from Chrome doesn’t mean you should—or that doing so is better for your privacy.
Spatial processing is a very private way to use AI capabilities. If you remove the model, the features Google uses for it—including AI-powered scam detection—will stop working. But since Gemini Nano is also used by Chrome to enable local AI processing for third-party developers, blocking this route can have far-reaching consequences when interacting with non-Google web services in the browser. A Google spokesperson tells WIRED that if you turn off AI on a device, “certain security features won’t be available, and sites that use the device’s APIs will behave differently.”
Of course, if neither option seems right, there’s always another way: Use a different browser.
