This seems somewhat specious - it's also quite possible that they just altered the wording to make it less verbose. Does anyone have access to the link "Learn more about on-device AI"?
If Chrome starts sending data from the browser back to Google, that's going to be a huge compliance issue. If you work for a company that processes customer data in the browser, you're going to need to ban Chrome.
Chrome has been recording metadata (URLs, timestamps, etc) about your activity since forever, and you can turn this off if you like, see https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity.
They don't record data (POSTs etc).
That's on Google apps, that's not on Chrome. That's not Chrome sending your browsing data or content from inside webpages to Google.
Nitpicky, but metadata is data and this distinction favors google too much in my opinion
"Learn more about on-device AI" links to this: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/16961953
This seems to be what they're hedging against:
> Some AI features in Chrome do not rely on on-device Generative models, and those features may still run even if the on-device Generative AI models are removed.
it already sends data back to google, the ai stuff, everything that goes in the address bar goes straight to google unless you specifically configure chrome to block it
the on-device ai just offloads some work onto your device
i doubt anyone will be banning chrome, for some reason "it's for ai" is a valid excuse for any amount of sillyness
Chrome has been doing that since the beginning.
Good idea.
Yeah, I staunchly refuse to believe an ad company that releases a closed-source browser would violate our privacy. You're probably right that they changed the claim simply because it was too verbose. That's the best and only explanation.