Mac Users Are Nuking Every Trace of Apple AI on Their Machines: Sayonara useless AI features, and hello disk space.

Apparently an unpopular opinion here but I highly appreciate the move by Apple to embrace local AI. Sure it’s not perfect in any sense, but I like the direction.

Same here. Local is not the problem. Control is.

I’m curious what this tool does that is different from turning off Apple Intelligence in the Settings because they already give you some degree of control.

You can’t turn it off anymore in Golden Gate. It is a mandatory download (in countries where it is supported) now.

You can still disable some specific AI-related features, but you can’t block the models entirely.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, that’s a ton of disk space, and Apple is notoriously chintzy when it comes to storage. On the other hand, I do want the default to be local-only models, and giving developers easy access will make that the path of least resistance. Most of my problems with LLMs don’t apply to moderately-sized local models.