AI takes on a bigger role in finding Chrome vulnerabilities

Google has expanded the use of AI in Chrome’s security workflow, using it to find vulnerabilities, triage bug reports, generate patches, and review code to shorten the time between discovering software flaws and delivering security updates.

“Historically, triaging a single security report took anywhere from 5 to 30 or more minutes, and relied primarily on human expertise. We have been increasingly shifting our triage process towards an automated approach that blends rule-based systems with AI to increase throughput and accuracy,” The Chrome Security team explained.

AI-powered vulnerability discovery

Google has used AI to support Chrome security work for several years. In 2026, it expanded those efforts with a Gemini-based system that searches the Chrome codebase for vulnerabilities. One notable finding was a sandbox escape vulnerability that had remained in the code for more than 13 years. According to Google, the flaw could have allowed a compromised renderer process to access local files.

Since then, Google has added support for open-weight and proprietary models working alongside each other and built a knowledge base from Chrome’s Git history and previously disclosed CVEs, allowing the models to reason beyond the information available during training.

A separate “critic” agent reviews SECURITY.md files that developers use to document trust boundaries in their code, while vulnerability scans run multiple times because AI model outputs can vary between runs.

“We’ve built all of this with safety in mind, and have put in place guardrails to mitigate the risk of AI behaving unexpectedly.”

AI assists with remediation

AI is used during remediation. It generates candidate patches, reviews proposed fixes, and writes tests before engineers review the changes. Google said Chrome 149 and Chrome 150 included fixes for 1,072 security bugs, exceeding the total number fixed during the previous 23 stable releases combined.

Google said the higher number of reported vulnerabilities reflects improved detection rather than a decline in Chrome’s security, noting that “an increase in bugs found and fixed is not a sign of failure.”

Reducing the patch gap

Google is working to reduce the “patch gap”—the period between publishing a security fix in Chrome’s source code and users installing the update. During that window, attackers can analyze publicly available patches to develop exploits before updates reach users.

Fixes move from the main code tree into the Stable branch based on severity, and Google is piloting two security releases a week instead of its usual weekly cadence as AI helps attackers analyze vulnerabilities more quickly.

“Even with this pace, proper public disclosure remains paramount,” the company noted.

To shorten the window between releasing and applying security updates, Google is developing dynamic patching that would allow Chrome to update key browser components without a complete restart. The company is testing ways to restart the browser automatically when users are less likely to be disrupted.

“People have understandable reasons to delay restarting Chrome. A restart can be disruptive, requires scheduling in-between tasks, and is rarely the top priority at any given moment.”

Longer-term security improvements

External bug reports rose rapidly in 2026, and by March Google had already logged more submissions than during all of 2025. The company updated its Vulnerability Reward Program in response, encouraging external researchers to focus on bugs its internal tools are less likely to discover.

Google is removing entire categories of bugs from Chrome’s C++ code by expanding a memory-safety tool called MiraclePtr and migrating new components to the memory-safe language Rust. Separately, AI models scan code changes before they are merged, catching cases where a small change in one part of the codebase turns unrelated code into a vulnerability.

Chrome depends on more than 2,300 third-party components, and Google is moving them to pipelines that update them automatically. The company is also contributing $12.5 million to the Alpha-Omega project, which supports open-source maintainers.

“The AI era has undeniably intensified the software security threat landscape, but by combining rapid deployment mechanisms with deep structural defenses, we are ensuring the advantage remains firmly with defenders. With this, Chrome and the broader web become safer with every update,” Google concluded.