On-Device AI
Also called: edge AI, local AI
Running a model on a phone or laptop instead of sending data to a server.
On-device inference keeps data local, works offline, and has no per-token cost — genuinely attractive for privacy and regulated contexts. The trade is capability: local models are smaller and slower than frontier APIs. Quantization and distillation are what make it viable at all.
In practice: Transcribing a confidential meeting without the audio leaving the laptop.
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