Curious about DeepSeek but worried about privacy? These apps let you use an LLM without the internet

The desktop apps LM Studio and GPT4All allow users to run various LLM models directly on their computers.

Most of us are used to using internet chatbots like ChatGPT and DeepSeek in one of two ways: via a web browser or via their dedicated smartphone apps. There are two drawbacks to this. First, their use requires an internet connection. Second, everything you type into the chatbot is sent to the companies’ servers, where it is analyzed and retained. In other words: the more you use the chatbot the more the company knows about you. This is a particular worry surrounding DeepSeek that American lawmakers have expressed.