Google has decided for us to install its “helpful” AI features directly into Chrome. These tools will definitely affect how you browse, search, write, and interact online.
The lack of consent and transparency is troubling – and opting out is not intuitive. Users who have manually removed it say it is re-installed the next time Chrome is launched.
When AI is embedded into a browser used by billions of people, it potentially gains access to users’ browsing habits, search history, passwords (and autofill behavior), shopping, and yes, even their financial information.
It opens up another door to those companies who claim your data is “protected”. We have slowly been taught that convenience comes before privacy. It is now getting us to accept that AI is not only normal, but necessary in our every day use and is unavoidable instead of optional. Features are enabled by default, option out settings buried in a program, without people realizing how much of their personal data they’re giving away.
Browsers were meant to connect us to the internet so we could find information useful to us. It was not meant to monitor, predict, and recommend what we see. If our information is there, others will find it. This is a real privacy issue and should concern all of us.
This lack of transparency and forcing us to accept features we do not wish (indeed do not even know exist on our devices) makes one wonder whether browsers are working for us, or working on us.
AI can be helpful, but we need clear opt-in choices, transparent policies, real privacy control, and the ability to completely disable these systems. I suspect this will not only not happen, but we will begin seeing more of the same from other browsers.
