Engineers argue that AI functions should not all be left to the cloud and that “local AI should be the default”

IT engineer Syrus Lopez says apps should default to local, on-device AI for data-transforming features like summarization and extraction.

He argues cloud AI adds privacy, reliability, and operational risks because user data must leave the device and depend on external APIs.

Lopez points to his news app, The Brutalist Report, which generates summaries on-device using Apple’s local model API.

He says cloud AI still has a role for harder tasks, but simple features should run locally when possible.