The developers of Draw Things have launched Local Code, an open-source AI assistant that lets Mac users download models and put them to work on their own computers.
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Local Code Launches as Free, Private AI Assistant Tool for Mac
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The developers of Draw Things have launched Local Code, an open-source AI assistant that lets Mac users download models and put them to work on their own computers.
iMac The Knife
macrumors 68000
"Serious AI work that will never be done on my Mac" Fixed it for you! 🙂
ArtOfWarfare
macrumors G3
Nice except DeepSeek is Chinese, and I've not heard of Qwen but I suspect it is, too.
Why not the Meta one? And what other models can reasonably be run locally?
Why not the Meta one? And what other models can reasonably be run locally?
would you trust Meta over chinese and Qwen is that ? some workloads then this more than acceptable. See some AI declines in shares recently, well for some enterprises string a bunch of studios together and run this or Llama etc ..
Free AI in effect no subs, no openAI etc
CheesePuff
macrumors 68000
Well yeah because the only open source models that are targeting frontier models are from China, Qwen 3.8 Max is very impressive, and if it's run locally why are you concerned that they're Chinese?
Haiku_Oezu
macrumors 65816
Stop it, you’re going to make Sam Altman cry by hoarding all that DRAM in your computers like selfish little ghouls
That’s memory that could go to an OpenAI data center so it can help deafen people living in the suburbs, have you no shame?
That’s memory that could go to an OpenAI data center so it can help deafen people living in the suburbs, have you no shame?
ThisIsMike
macrumors 6502
This is - IF it’s as advertised and if it works well (I recognize those are two big ifs) - fantastic.
I’m very interested in reading others thoughts on this, but it seems like a huge win.
I’m extremely uncomfortable with aspects of the LLMs. The more alternatives the better, particularly if it keeps my data private and doesn’t require a subscription. This is also potentially absolutely something Apple should love, as it further supports their approach to running as much AI on device as possible, which in turn will require the hardware capable of doing so, and which will ultimately translate into more sales for the mothership.
I’m very interested in reading others thoughts on this, but it seems like a huge win.
I’m extremely uncomfortable with aspects of the LLMs. The more alternatives the better, particularly if it keeps my data private and doesn’t require a subscription. This is also potentially absolutely something Apple should love, as it further supports their approach to running as much AI on device as possible, which in turn will require the hardware capable of doing so, and which will ultimately translate into more sales for the mothership.
j569mxr
macrumors member
there are a ton of options to work locally. what makes this one better than the others? what makes it worthy of an article vs others?
Because a marketing statement that it is local does not necessarily mean that it is local.
You should monitor all of your outbound traffic. A surprising amount goes to China. Why?
serpico007
macrumors 6502
The more I stay away from AI, it creeps slowly into my life via employment and every day personal tasks. As much as I dislike the bad effects to society AI creates, I can't put my head in the sand like an ostrich and believe this will all disappear when the bubble bursts. Some of this stuff will still continue in some form or other. Ugh.
I turn my network off when I'm running local LLMs. Are you suggesting that when I reconnect my network, all my data is suddenly being exported without my knowledge? How would I monitor that?
CheesePuff
macrumors 68000
There are plenty of ways to run local models, you don't need to use this...
Unsloth is better
Theres also Premsys on iOS
Theres also Premsys on iOS
no butyl it does is a different front end to others to run these things, so disconnected from I=internet and running a test
such a non-issue nowadays, just download LuLu or Little Snitch and you can monitor / turn whatever outbound off. "local" becomes local.
How do you know the model is local, all of the major model creators have had their models escape into the wild.
The issue is not running it local, it is exactly how much you trust the program running the model and the OS's security concerning what it can do.
Nope If you turn your network off, then I think you are good. I would however reboot before connecting the network back to make sure there are no queued network actions.
You monitor outbound connections using your firewall. In mine I added a rule to log all outbound connections.
I fully agree. AI has its plus’s and minus’s but overall one of the big pain points is privacy and data ownership. We have these powerful “AI chips” in most modern computers, we should be doing a lot more AI on device.
Prior methods of running local LLMs work well enough but local AI will never gain the footing it needs unless software makes it easy for average users to use local models. I’ll definitely be testing this out.
Astuces iOS
macrumors 68040
Spanky Deluxe
macrumors 603
Because Meta's one isn't very good. Google's ones are decent but the ones from Qwen have been a step ahead for a while now. They're truly fantastic for the size. Not sure what the issue is with running a Chinese model to you but the alternatives are models from US companies that have cozied up to that nonce in the US White House so it's not like they can be 'trusted'.
I'm not sure what you're saying. A surprising amount of what data goes to China? Unless you specifically connect these models to the internet, they cannot communicate outside and even then, they don't 'phone home'. That's just not how they function. Now sure, the developer of this software could add in some kind of phone home ability but it's not the models doing that. And you can monitor that if you're paranoid with the likes of Little Snitch.
I think you're misunderstanding how these models work and run locally. They don't 'escape'. They don't leave your computer. It's just a bit of software that runs on your machine. These models are not sentient or alive.
Notably, this is from the developer of https://drawthings.ai/ which is a well regarded, Mac native, and privacy focused AI image app.
It is getting easier by each development in the end the query I did as shown failed as did not have the draw model, asked for it to draw apple ecosystem and took it off the net .. but this is only on an M4 MacBook Air 16gb memory... now imagine the bigger beasts etc
tim_apple
macrumors regular
You have no clue what you are talking about. A model, in this context, is just a big file with a bunch of floating point numbers in it. If you run it locally, it’s local.
Why do you care that it's Chinese (and, yes, Qwen models are also from China)? Models can't spy on you, you know! And if you suspect that any code it might produce has "back doors" or other such tin-foil-hat concerns, you can always examine said code before you do anything with it.
I currently use Ollama + Qwen Model (qwen2.5-coder:32b) + Aider on my Mac. It's not great with large HTML/Javascript creation/updates when compared to Gemini, but for smaller changes it's great. And it's free.
It looks like this tool is basically just a front-end integration of the above? Maybe not even Aider (since it mentions not being able to modify local files due to sandboxing)?
It looks like this tool is basically just a front-end integration of the above? Maybe not even Aider (since it mentions not being able to modify local files due to sandboxing)?