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5 days agoNot to bash them or something, but just FYI: I got interested in how they’ve implemented AI client-side, and they use Android MLKit in their Android app for that.
The problem with MLKit is that it phones back to… ta-dam!.. Google, even if it’s not actually used by the app, and that telemetry can’t be legally (and neither in any convenient and reliable way te technically) disabled, even by the app developer.
It doesn’t seem to be sending any sensitive information in that telemetry, but I don’t know Rick: changing Google for… Google?
No, the actual AI runs locally, on the phone. What MLKit does is two things:
Downloads the actual AI models from Google’s servers — not sure, but maybe they can be bundled or downloaded from other sources.
Send the usage analytics about those models — again, don’t remember exactly what’s being sent but the actual prompts/source images/model responses shouldn’t be sent in normal operation.
Why I highlighted the normal operation thing is because Google is kinda famous for collecting data it shouldn’t be collecting, e.g. read this README for example: https://github.com/PlqnK/magisk-supl-replacer