Security researcher Alexander Hanff, also known as "That Privacy Guy," has published a new analysis claiming that Google Chrome is silently downloading a roughly 4GB on-device AI model to users' machines without notice or consent. According to Hanff, the behavior mirrors a separate issue he recently identified involving Anthropic's desktop software, and together the two cases point to a broader pattern of how large tech companies deploy AI features.
Hanff's earlier report focused on Anthropic's Claude Desktop app, which he says quietly installed a browser integration bridge across multiple Chromium-based browsers on a system, including five browsers he did not even have installed. According to the researcher, this happened without any user prompt or meaningful disclosure, and the integration would reinstall itself if removed. He argues that this kind of silent modification of a user's environment violates both user expectations and, in his view, European privacy law.
