The impact of AI on the world’s most popular web browser has meant that Google has, commencing immediately with the rollout of Chrome 153 , accelerated the security update cycle from every four weeks to every two.

This should come as no great surprise to regular readers, as I reported in March that this change would be happening. I said at the time that this was necessary to help plug what is known as the patch gap , and now Deepak Ravichandran, a distinguished engineer at Google, and senior technical program manager, Ben Mason, have confirmed this in a September 8 announcement .

The Google Chrome AI Vulnerability Issue

Like all major platforms and products, Google is seeing more vulnerabilities disclosed, thanks to AI tooling now being used by bug bounty hunters and internal security teams alike to assist their work. The evidence is out there for anyone to see: Microsoft released the September Patch Tuesday, which contains a record 973 vulnerabilities , and Oracle also recently broke records with 1,449 patches in the July quarterly update. Google Chrome 153, the first of the new fortnightly security updates, itself reported no less than 230 vulnerabilities .

This is an issue, no doubt, but it is not the knell of doom for your browser or any product, truth be told. More disclosed vulnerabilities do not automatically translate into greater danger to your security. While that might appear somewhat of a contrary statement, give it some thought, and you will see I am right. Vulnerabilities discovered, disclosed and patched before they reach those who would abuse them are not a bad thing. Just because AI vulnerability discovery finds more of them, that conclusion doesn’t change. What does change is how you deal with the patching itself. While some platforms roll out multiple individual updates, and organizations in particular have to prioritize their application based on real-world risk, Chrome updates deal with the whole lot in one go. What’s more, the Chrome updates are automatic and only require the user to relaunch their browser to activate.

And that’s where the new announcement comes in, with Google confirming an increased update cadence from four-weekly to two-weekly. “When browser updates are deployed more quickly,” Ravichandran and Mason said, “developers can ship modern web features with confidence, knowing that deployment windows are tighter, interoperability updates arrive quickly, and safety improvements reach users faster across platforms.” For end users, especially consumers, shorter release cycles improve security posture considerably. “Shrinking the window between landing a fix in the public codebase and delivering it to end users keeps the “N-day” patch gap as small as possible,” Google confirmed, “helping us protect against fast-moving threats.”

Ignore the ongoing hype over “end of the world” AI threats; your browser, at least, has you covered. If you have been asked to restart Google Chrome, then the version 153 update has landed, and that restart activates the installation. If not, you can use the three-dot Chrome menu to manually start the update search, download and installation process in a matter of minutes, or less. And all of this happens every 14 days now…