Local model

A model that runs on your own computer or your own server rather than on an AI company's. Less capable than the big cloud ones — but nothing you type into it leaves the building.

Why it matters: the question isn't whether you work in a regulated industry. It's whether you hold anything about other people that you'd rather not hand to a company you don't control. Customer addresses. Card details. Staff records. A complaint someone made in confidence. Nearly every business holds some of that, and every time it gets pasted into a cloud AI it has been shared.

That's the trade, and it's yours to make: a sharper model that sees your data, or a blunter one that doesn't. For most everyday work the blunter one is perfectly fine — and for the handful of jobs where it isn't, the point is simply knowing the option exists. "Could this run locally?" is a fair question to put to anyone setting AI up for you.

Related: Model · Frontier model