Privacy and deployment

Running an AI model on computers you control, whether your own servers or a private cloud, instead of sending data to a provider's service.

A model running on the machine in front of you, so what you type never leaves it.

AI that runs on or beside the device producing the data, such as a phone, camera or vehicle, rather than sending it away to be processed.

AI that runs on a provider's servers and reaches you over the internet, which is how nearly every well-known assistant works.

Software whose code is published under a licence that lets anyone read, change and redistribute it.

A model whose trained parameters are published for anyone to download and run, unlike closed models used only through a provider's service.

A model you can only use through its owner's service, with the trained file itself never released.

What happens to the text, files and recordings you put into an AI tool: who can see them, how long they are kept, and whether they train the model.

A setting that tells a provider not to use your conversations to train its models.

A commitment about which country your data is stored in, usually the first question asked in regulated work and in the public sector.

Whose laws your data falls under, which is not settled by storage location alone because the provider's own jurisdiction can still reach it.

Running software on hardware you control, in your own building or data centre, rather than reaching it as a service over the internet.

A deployment with no connection to the internet at all, used where data must not leave the room and updates arrive by hand.

How long a vendor keeps your inputs and outputs before deleting them, and whether you can change that period.

A vendor commitment to discard your inputs and outputs immediately after answering, usually available on enterprise terms and worth getting in writing.

Stripping or replacing personal details before text reaches a model, so a name or account number never leaves your control.

Keeping each customer's data separated inside a shared service, the assurance behind a vendor saying your content stays yours.

A private route to a hosted model that avoids the public internet, sitting between ordinary cloud access and running the thing yourself.

A vendor offering to run the service in a chosen part of the world, which is how a data residency promise is usually delivered.