One of the big concerns with most of the public AI tools that are available is privacy. Every query, piece of provided data and other content sent to online AI services can lead to data leakage. But new tools are emerging that allow you to run AI tools on your Mac, even without an internet connection.
Ollama uses the recently released OpenAI gpt-oss model to answer prompts on your Mac for no cost directly on your Mac.
Once you download the software (your Windows and Linux using friends aren’t left out) and enter a prompt, the AI model is downloaded (the default get-oss:20b model was a 12.8GB download) and you’re ready to go.
In addition to the default model, you can choose from a range of models of varying sizes, including DeepSeek, Gemma, and Gwen.
I asked the model to proof read a draft of this post and it did a reasonable job. It suggested changes to my second paragraph that I rejected as it did feel like something I’d write. But I I did accept its suggestions for another piece of the post. Can you guess what the AI wrote?
I also asked it some more open questions. For example, I asked it “What are five tips for aspiring writers?”.
The advice it provided was reasonable and took about a second to process.
I recently injured my ankle so I asked the software “What’s the best treatment for a syndesmosis injury?” Again, the software as able to provide a reasonable answer, in 2.2 seconds, which I had verified by a medical professional. But the software did note that it is not qualified to give actual medical advice and recommended seeing a qualified healthcare professional.
You’ll need to do a little bit of research to find the best model to meet your specific with Ollama but my initial testing (on a Mac Studio M2) suggests solid performance without the concerns of my prompts and other information landing in the public domain.
Anthony is the founder of Australian Apple News. He is a long-time Apple user and former editor of Australian Macworld. He has contributed to many technology magazines and newspapers as well as appearing regularly on radio and occasionally on TV.