Most AIs leak by default. Here is the small list that does not — and how to choose between them.
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A privacy-respecting AI does five things: (1) does not train on your conversations by default, (2) lets you export and delete your data, (3) tells you which LLM is in the path, (4) does not share your data with third parties for advertising, (5) has not had a major regulatory action that surfaced privacy violations. Anything that fails any of these is not in the running.
For the most sensitive work — medical questions, financial decisions, anything you would not want subpoenaed — on-device is the right answer. The setup cost (download Ollama, pick a model) is small. The capability gap to frontier cloud models has narrowed sharply in 2026. For most personal questions, a 70B open model running locally is now genuinely sufficient.
For day-to-day use where you want the polish, voice, memory and agentic capability of a proper companion AI, sovereign cloud (Luna) is the practical choice. You give up the absolute privacy of on-device for a richer experience, but you avoid the dominant privacy risk class (third-party LLM data flows).
Sovereign by default — no third-party LLM in the hot path. Heaven Quantum Cortex on Heaven's own infrastructure.
Memory Pods are encrypted at rest and in transit, exportable on request, deletable on request. No training on your conversations by default.
For maximum privacy on supported devices, Heaven Code Studio ships an on-device LLM (WebGPU). Standalone Mode for the full conversational stack is on the roadmap.
The on-device tier is genuinely private — runs locally on your device with no network. The Private Cloud Compute tier is a strong attempt at server-side privacy with cryptographic guarantees Apple publishes openly. For most consumer AI tasks, Apple Intelligence sets a high privacy bar — though it is currently limited in scope and platform.
Better, not maximal. Disabling training means OpenAI does not use your conversations to improve models. They still store your conversations for service operation and may share with law enforcement under valid warrants. For most non-sensitive use, this is fine. For high-sensitivity, prefer sovereign or on-device.
Yes. Ollama + a 7-70B open model runs entirely offline on a modern Mac/PC. The capability gap to frontier cloud AI is real but narrower than most users assume. For text-focused work, offline AI is genuinely usable in 2026.
Ask: (1) Which upstream LLM API does my conversation flow through? — sovereign answer is "none." (2) Where is my data stored and for how long? (3) Do you train on user data? (4) Can I export and delete on request? Honest providers answer cheerfully. Most "private AI" marketing falls apart under these questions.