For clarity sake, that’s not what’s happening here. (Don’t misunderstand this comment as defending google, I could write a book about how much they suck)

The model downloaded is a LLM called Gemini Nano, and it’s used for things like “help me write”, checking if an incoming message is scam, summaries, etc.

Don’t worry about it itself being a spyware. It’s not; but for argument sake, if we were to assume that it was: they already know a lot about you through their usual apps and services, and get a lot more info out of you through them. This LLM would hardly move that needle.

The actual issue is that they download it for everyone, even if their devices don’t match the minimum requirements. And without consent. And to enable it, you need to go through several menus, as the default behaviour is to use the cloud (this could change eventually, my understanding is that in this update they’re just laying the foundation)

But, it’s Google that we’re talking about. Last year they were sentenced to pay a fine for spying on users despite them having their tracking settings off. And it wasn’t the first time iirc. This kind of behaviour is par for the course with them