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Show HN: AI Block Block all websites from using window.ai (Chrome on-device AI)
TLDR: All your data are belong to you.
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Chrome is introducing window.ai - which essentially will allow any website to run AI / LLM tasks on YOUR device, via your chrome browser. Basically chrome will add the "Gemini Nano" language model to your browser locally.
Like advertising, I never asked for this, and I don't want this, and I don't want websites to be able to do this.
I make loads of browser extensions (for fun and profit).
So I thought, "why don't I just make an ad-blocker equivalent, an 'AI-block-er'?"
And thus AI Block was born.
You install the extension, it runs automatically whenever a site loads, and programmatically blocks access to the window.ai API by overriding it.
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But also, I don't trust, that this window.ai API will be particularly secure or used in an honest-manner.
I worry it may leak sensitive on-device data to websites, or be used to "call-home" to Google and send juicy advertising data back to Google about me, this time the data will be LLM-verified.
Just note that the install will say
"Can read and change your data on all websites" - this is simply because its a content script with the host_permission "<all_urls>" so it works on all sites (thats a broad permission so it triggers the warning).
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Happy webbing folks.
Papillon
- purple-leafy 2y agoI would love to hear peoples thoughts regarding window.ai, both pros and cons. Right now the extension fully blocks the use of window.ai, but if requested by enough people I can modify the code to only block blacklisted urls, or setup a whitelist Cheers
- dmarti 2y agoGoogle Chrome has another "AI training" API that has been there for a while -- document.browsingTopics() -- this is for passing information about your browsing history to ML on the Google side. Hard to be sure about what information about you can be inferred from this. It might also be a good idea to block or warn about sites using that one. More info: https://noyb.eu/en/google-sandbox-online-tracking-instead-privacy https://noyb.eu/en/google-sandbox-online-tracking-instead-pr... https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/726#issuecomment-1379908459 https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/726#issuecom...