[Tag Review] - Model versions and updates #174
Description
From: w3ctag/design-reviews#1093 (comment)
As noted in the Privacy Considerations section of the Writing Assistance API, models on a single browser might have different versions, leading to a fingerprinting vector based on what capabilities are available to a model (e.g., Model-V4 vs ModelV5 vs Model-1.2 or whatever). It is great to see these concerns identified in the Privacy Considerations section of the Writing Assistance API. Consider how not exposing anything about the underlying implementation might address some of the concerns. Similarly, different versions could lead to different results based on available capabilities.
We're worried that models could be updated at some unreasonable periodic cadence, meaning potentially gigabytes of additional downloads per update cadence (e.g., once a week, once a month). Please consider the naive user agent implementations that could have implications on the user's phone plan and available storage.
We acknowledge that it might be impossible to prevent a website from identifying different model versions by poking at the model, but it would be good to consider if completely obscuring if a model is on device or not might help here.
We're concerned that pages might get confused if the model updates between page loads. Can you think about how pages might get consistent results over time?