Chrome needs 20 GB free space to install local AI models

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TL;DR

Google has updated its support documentation to show that downloading the models that power Chrome’s on-device AI features requires approximately 20 gigabytes of available storage space.

The install size of the models is still approximately 4 GB, Google has confirmed.

You can disable Chrome’s on-device AI features in the browser’s settings.

Google’s been working for a while to integrate Gemini more deeply into Chrome for some time now. Some users were confused and annoyed this spring when Chrome started automatically downloading a multi-gigabyte file called weights.bin that enables Gemini Nano features to run locally. Now, Google’s updated its documentation to reflect that you’ll actually need quite a bit more free space to actually download the files required for local AI features.

As spotted by Windows Report (via PiunikaWeb ), the Google Chrome Help Center entry about the browser’s on-device generative AI models has been updated to reflect that you’ll need approximately 20 gigs of free disk space to install the models that power local AI features. You’ll also need an unmetered data connection, plus “ Sufficient device performance.”