Enhance your AI experience by running a private chatbot on your PC

The PC industry works on bringing AI chatbots that run directly on your device instead of a faraway center. The process will take time, and you will likely need to buy an AI PC. Also, there is a chance that it will come with a popular AI installed like Copilot, especially if it is a laptop. However, if you don’t want to wait for AI PCs, you can start running private AI chatbots on your PC with the right tool.

What are the benefits of running a private AI chatbot on your PC?

Running a private AI chatbot on your PC brings many benefits. For example, they don’t need an internet connection, and you know exactly where your data goes. Also, they might have fewer limitations than the popular ones. So, you might see fewer messages like “I’m sorry, but I can’t continue this conversation” or “Let’s try a different topic.”

The future of AI could consist of private chatbots running on your PC. After all, they might perform tasks better than their public counterparts. Yet, before we get there, you can use Ollama.

Ollama is an open-source project named after Llama LLM from Meta. It allows you to run private AI chatbots on your PC. The tool is easy to install and use and works on Windows 10, 11, Linux, and macOS. In addition, it uses your hardware to accelerate the AI models. With it, you won’t need a PC with a 40 TOPS NPU performance because it runs on various PCs.

Once installed, to use Ollama, open a command-line window like Terminal, Command Prompt, or PowerShell. To access the command line, press Win + X. Then, to use an AI chatbot, type: ollama run llama2. Afterward, the tool will download the AI model and its required files. When the installation is over, you will see the following: >>> Send a message (/? for help), and you can start using the chatbot. Then, to close the session type /bye and press Enter.

There are plenty of AI chatbots available on the Ollama site. For example, you can use Llama 3 from Meta, Mistral, Gema from Google, Phi-3 Mini from Microsoft, and more. Also, if you don’t want to use Ollama, try Open WebUI.

Additional tools

In addition, if you want to use a private AI model on your PC, you can get Nvidia ChatRTX. However, it requires a PC with a 30-series or 40-series GPU with at least 8 GB of VRAM. Nvidia ChatRTX has a web-based interface and can run LLama 2, Mistral, and Gemma.

Another tool you could run on your PC is GPT4ALL, but it has fewer private AI chatbots available. Yet, it doesn’t require high-end hardware and works on various systems.

Ultimately, there are a few ways in which you can install and run private AI chatbots on your PC. Most of them don’t require high-end devices and they can keep your data safe. If you decide to get one for your PC, make sure that you scan it for malware. Also, don’t forget that they have limited resources compared to public chatbots.

Are you going to use a private AI model? Let us know in the comments.