By Thomas Claburn
Publication Date: 2026-05-09 17:57:00
ai and ml
Deletion of a longstanding privacy assurance sparks concerns
Google has changed Chrome’s disclosure language about how its on-device AI works, but that doesn’t mean the company intends to capture on-device AI interactions.
The Chrome menu modification, which isn’t universally rolled out yet even in Chrome 148, was noted this week on Reddit.
The “On-device AI” message in Chrome’s System settings previously read, “To power features like scam detection, Chrome can use AI models that run directly on your device without sending your data to Google servers. When this is off, these features might not work.”
But the message changed recently – it lost the phrase “without sending your data to Google servers.”
That prompted privacy advocate Alexander Hanff to question whether the edit signaled an architectural change that would see local AI interactions processed by Google servers instead of remaining on-device.
“Why…
