Originally published on ExtensionBooster .

AI Chrome extension privacy stopped being a footnote once Google's Chrome team reported at I/O 2026 that 17% of extensions created for the Chrome Web Store in the past year use AI. Each one ships part of a user's page to a model. Here is how to send less, ask properly, and prove what you sent, with code you can drop into a Manifest V3 extension.

Why users are suspicious (and why badges didn't help)

Two investigations from late 2025 set the tone:

Koi Security (December 2025): four extensions from one publisher, with more than 8 million combined users, captured conversations from roughly ten AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.…