Google quietly released an app that lets you download and run AI models locally

Final week, Google quietly launched an app that lets customers run a variety of overtly obtainable AI fashions from the AI dev platform Hugging Face on their telephones.

Known as Google AI Edge Gallery, the app is out there for Android and can quickly come to iOS. It permits customers to seek out, obtain, and run appropriate fashions that generate photos, reply questions, write and edit code, and extra. The fashions run offline, without having an web connection, tapping into supported telephones’ processors.

AI fashions operating within the cloud are sometimes extra highly effective than their native counterparts, however in addition they have their downsides. Some customers is perhaps cautious of sending private or delicate information to a distant information heart, or need to have fashions obtainable without having to discover a Wi-Fi or mobile connection.

Google AI Edge Gallery, which Google is asking an “experimental Alpha launch,” could be downloaded from GitHub by following these instructions. The house display screen exhibits shortcuts to AI duties and capabilities like “Ask Picture” and “AI Chat.” Tapping on a functionality pulls up an inventory of fashions fitted to the duty, akin to Google’s Gemma 3n.

Google AI Edge Gallery additionally gives a “Immediate Lab” customers can use to kick off “single-turn” duties powered by fashions, like summarizing and rewriting textual content. The Immediate Lab comes with a number of activity templates and configurable settings to fine-tune the fashions’ behaviors.

Your mileage might fluctuate when it comes to efficiency, Google warns. Fashionable gadgets with extra highly effective {hardware} will predictably run fashions quicker, however the mannequin measurement additionally issues. Bigger fashions will take extra time to finish a activity — say, answering a query about a picture — than smaller fashions.

Google’s inviting members of the developer neighborhood to offer suggestions on the Google AI Edge Gallery expertise. The app is below an Apache 2.0 license, which means it may be utilized in most contexts — industrial or in any other case — with out restriction.