Contrary to popular belief, Apple has quietly integrated a native language model into iOS 26, turning recent iPhones into local AI assistants. The Locally AI app, developed by French developer Adrien Grondin, allows users to leverage this hidden potential without an Internet connection.
How to activate Apple’s in‑house AI
Available on iPhone 15 Pro, 16, and 17, Locally AI provides access to the Apple Foundation model without any additional download. The interface is reminiscent of ChatGPT: generating recipes, planning trips, or drafting texts. Tests by Numerama on the iPhone 17 Pro show responses in just a few seconds, with the major advantage of local processing.
While Apple Foundation is less powerful than its cloud-based competitors, its offline operation protects privacy and extends battery life. However, the model does not process images and may refuse certain requests. A glimpse of the future Siri, but for now limited to text generation.
