Definition
On-premise AI is AI software, including models, indexes and logs, that runs on an organisation's own servers rather than as a third-party cloud service.
How it differs from cloud AI
With cloud AI, prompts and documents are sent to a provider's service. With on-premise AI, the same work happens on hardware the organisation runs, so data does not leave its network.
Trade-offs
- More control: data, models and logs stay inside.
- More responsibility: hardware, operations and upgrades, unless a partner runs them.
- Lower marginal cost at scale: no per-user fees; small fine-tuned models keep hardware modest.
Variants
A private cloud account you control is a common alternative to a physical data centre and gives similar control.
See deployment.