Core Concepts
On-Device AI
AI that runs entirely on your phone or laptop — no cloud, no internet required.
Also known as: edge AI,local AI
On-device AI runs entirely on your phone, laptop, or watch — no internet connection required, no data sent to any server. Apple Intelligence runs on iPhone. Google's Gemini Nano runs on Pixel phones. Microsoft Copilot+ runs on PC NPUs. The trade-off versus cloud AI: on-device models are smaller (typically 3–7 billion parameters vs 200B+ for frontier cloud models) so they are less capable on hard tasks, but they are dramatically faster (no network round-trip), more private (data never leaves your device), and free of subscription costs. In 2026, on-device AI handles most everyday tasks — summaries, smart replies, photo search, basic Q&A — with cloud models reserved for genuinely hard work.