You could check out localllama on lemmy to run foss ai models locally, or you could check out duck.ai as someone else mentioned. Your mental health should come first so do what you can for privacy but don't feel bad about making compromises.
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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Privacy
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Yes, you can use an locally hosted LLM, but these never can be so powerfull as an AI with a lot of servers supporting. We have to difference it, between mere Chatbots, relying on its own database, often outdated and with the tendece to invent answers, and AI supported search engines, like Andi, You, DDG AI and others, which retrieve informations in realtime from the Web. But there is important that these are capable to difference trustworth sources from those which are not. Andi does a very good job here, because compare informations from several sites for the answer.
Ollama can pull info from the web using multiple sites, but yes local AIs are more prone to hallucination. Google did release Gemma3 which has a 27B model which is probably the most cost effective way to get into local models that rival chatgpt (if you can call about 2k cost effective). That was why I recommended duck.ai as well, as it has access to gpt and llama3.3:70b which will do a lot better.
The problem is privacythis don't change if the AI uses sources from big bompany - Google GPTs. I tested several free AIs from Hugging face, Futurepedia and Futuretools, and since over two years I use Andi as main search, I didn't find anything better. It use an own LLM, because Andi was the first AI search ever, former LazyWeb, long before the others released AI searches.
Use Andisearch, there are zero privacy concerns and it's apart the most accurate (independent Benchmark)
I get it, I've been there, but there is just no point in hating yourself because random big company wants to make money off of you, so they shove convenience in your face. Just do you best to align yourself to your values. Doesn't have to be perfect. It's ok if it's always work in progress. Don't put your life and wellbeing on hold.
Also duckduckgo.com/aichat is a thing.
I honestly am not sure on the privacy of it but if you really need a useful tool that's ai driven I tend to trust perplexity.ai for general questions and research but I agree with one of the others just run ollama if you can
I understand where you're coming from. I even went as far as to not using Bluetooth headphones anymore because of the radiation.I switched all my plastic utensils for wood and steel.I swapped out all my apps for foss apps.I was never really one to ever use AI for anything.I've kind of always enjoyed the hunt and the learning process when it came to figuring out foss applications. But it does feel super paranoid to always be worried about people watching you. When in reality, they aren't watching you. They are using your data to make money. They don't really care about who you are. So in short, I have started using Bluetooth headphones again, LOL.
I didn't tell ChatGPT who I am. I have a separate email address for it and everything.
Just keep in back of mind how everything is being linked and profiled behind the scenes. Without anything else, all they have to link you to other things is an IP address and an email. IP addresses aren't terribly reliable these days. There may be supercookie/fingerprinting mischief going on though.
Yes, you are leaking data, but don't panik. First of all, your mental health here and now is important - without it you won't have energy for other things. Next, It takes a lot of energy to de-google or de-corp and you don't wan't to 'leak' now, but in 6 months, you'll have your own private/foss talking AI assistant, and it will help you cut the ties to the last corporation then.
So, soon you'll be more 'invisible' for the corps, and maybe you can live with the spying/manipulation for a moment longer ? Not sure how long it takes for their AI to find you anyway, but at least the removed have to work for it..
Alternatively, get a free account at Groq (also have 'whisper' stt), or sambanova and install/use open-webui for talking. These new hardware corps don't train AI on free user interactions, and they probably don't sell your information - yet. There are other methods for p2p sharing of AI resources, but they may not provide quality high enough or with all modalities.
Chill out my friend. We use FOSS and privacy respecting things to make our lives easier and more enjoyable . Don't stress yourself. If you need to do something then do it. No need to feel bad.
Something is always better than nothing. You've done so much in terms of better privacy and using FOSS so you're doing great and better than most people. Just live your life and improve things step by step.
Thanks In a way I did still change a lot of habits. This on the other does feel like giving up a huge fight and making my brain think that I actually don't care about privacy/Foss at all, I'm usually not a "all or nothing" type of person, but it's a bit hard to wrap my head around this time
Dude, it's all good. I doubt anyone has entirely removed intrusion from their lives. I've been the nut in my family, friends and work environments (not complaining, I actually love being that person) on privacy and cybersecurity. I still keep my Gmail account, the one I used to buy all my movies when I thought Google wasn't evil. My kids love using the Lenovo Google Assistant screens. I have 2 Chromecast with Google TV with the account I mentioned (my TVs do not connect to the internet). I play on my PS5 with my account and use my credit card (none of that temp credit card or cash or crypto), but I haven't used my PayPal in years (but still have it). I buy shit on Amazon (it's so convenient).
The point being, do what you can to safeguard your privacy as much as possible, as long as it does not affect your mental health. You need Facebook for whatever reason? You can minimize the invasion, and still use it. (Full disclosure, I fucking hate Meta, so I don't use any of its platforms, or even their open source language model). I'm on GrapheneOS in my phone, use Linux exclusively in my personal life, but I'm picking up a surface pro 11th Gen for work this Friday. I need my job, everything is windows based, and it's just getting harder to use Ms shit from Linux effectively. So, I use Windows. I have a good job, get paid well, so, I have to decide if that's worth some of my privacy.
Live life man, enjoy, be happy, then worry about the rest.
Go set up an ollama instance and melt your worries away. Data in your hands once again.
However, you should also learn some restraint. Privacy and security aren't an all or nothing battle. Everyone has some holes in their armor, they need them to breathe.
most security planning workshops start with this statement:
"it is unreasonable as well as impossible to try and protect against every threat out there. there is no magic app, website, service that will solve everything. security is a mindset, and taking the time to understand what you want to protect and why will serve you better than any application."
that's a nice way to view it
Sounds like you might be sacrificing your mental wellbeing for some privacy gains. You should probably consider your priorities. Which one comes first?
If you say it like that...I should certainly try and remember the priorities in some situations
You see, the point is that privacy is really nice to have. However, it’s not worth it when the price you pay is your mental balance and serenity. There are easier and cheaper bits of privacy you can pursue, but you need to know where to draw the line. Some things just come with an unacceptable price. Maybe GPT is like that in your case.
If I may offer a suggestion:
OpenwebUI in a docker image, cloudflare tunnel set up to enable access outside the home, the cheapest domain name you can get.
You can selfhost your ChatGPT bot so you can keep your data to yourself!
You'll need a decently powerful PC at home, nothing crazy, any decent gaming rig from the last 5 years should run it fine!
Privacy is not all or nothing, and using one thing doesn't cancel all efforts somewhere else.
Don't go so far into the privacy hole that it affects your mental health. Just do what's easy for you.
In the end you're right, but as I was answering in another post, AI seems so big for the future and potentially invasive, that if I start giving this up, not having a google account or whatever, to me, would seem like nothing in comparison, if I'm trying to maintain a relative degree of privacy. So I feel like it's not giving up a bit of my infos, but probably all of it, specially when using an app. Not sure if I'm making sense. But it's like "ok, I won't give this man my info". "This other man, on the other hand, can live in my house and listen to everything"
You could always try out an AI service that doesn't collect data like duck.ai: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/duckai/
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