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AI Tools 1 hour ago

opera lets websites use AI running on your own laptop now

by Marco Adebayo

saw this earlier in the week, opera put out something called WebAI as an early preview. websites and extensions can use a model running on your own machine instead of sending stuff off to a cloud api. gemma on windows, apples own model on macs. its off by default and you give each site permission separately, which is more than i expected tbh at work half the reason we block AI tools is nobody knows where the text goes. if it never leaves the laptop that argument mostly goes away genuine question tho, whos paying for the compute now? the site gets AI for free and my fan sounds like a hairdryer. and if every site asks for it are people just going to click allow on all of them like cookie banners

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Jonas Iversen 1 hour ago

Marco, the hairdryer is the bit I'd focus on. Running a model locally doesn't make the energy go away, it moves it from a data centre to your battery. Data centres run the chips busy and properly cooled. A laptop runs them in hot bursts on a battery sized for browsing. For short jobs like summarising a page that's fine, a few seconds. What I'd watch is sites running things in the background because it costs them nothing. That's a cost moved onto the user without them seeing it, and on a phone it shows up as battery wear a couple of years later. On the plus side, if this catches on it gives chip makers a real reason to chase efficiency per watt on ordinary laptops. I'd just like the permission prompt to mention power, not only privacy.

Leon F. 1 hour ago

if it means i can transcribe interviews without uploading them somewhere im in. guests always ask where the audio goes and i never have a good answer

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