4 AI Text Generators You Can Install on Low-Spec Computers
The main limitation of generative AI, whether text or image, is that it requires a lot of processing power. That’s why all the great AI applications like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Midjourney, or DALL-E 3 run directly from the cloud.
So, when we install an image generator like Stable Diffussion on a local computer, it is essential that our computer has a good graphics card. The same thing happens if we want to install a local chatbot like Llama 3, which is capable of handling billions of parameters. We need a computer with up-to-date hardware and a lot of RAM (minimum 8GB to 16GB).
For this reason, Microsoft, along with other major manufacturers such as Dell and Asus, has already started manufacturing what are known as Copilot PC computers, which are nothing more than computers equipped with processors specifically designed to perform artificial intelligence tasks in a more intelligent and efficient way.
- 4 AI Chatbots You Can Install Locally on a Low-Performance Computer
Currently, Copilot+ PCs are expensive at around $1000, which is out of reach for many users. However, there are other generative AI systems that are much less demanding on the hardware level.
With minimal requirements, we can install them locally without the need for a high-end computer. Of course, as you will understand, these generative models also deal with a smaller volume of parameters, and therefore cannot perform advanced tasks like the latest versions of applications like ChatGPT or Gemini.
- GPT4All
GPT4All is not a language model, but a computer application into which we can insert different GPT-J and Llama models. It has a Windows client that we can download and then manage different compatible models from there.
It is a free and open source project, and also works offline.
- DistillBERT
It is a language model or LLM developed by HuggingFace, which is a smaller and faster version of BERT (a language model that Google has been working with for over 5 years).
DistilBERT is considered by many to be the best text generator for low-performance computers due to its efficiency. You can find installation instructions and download it from the HuggingFace website .
- ALBERT
As you can imagine from the name, ALBERT is another lightweight alternative to BERT but with a design that works differently at the computational level. ALBERT currently has 8 models in different sizes that we can download from the HuggingFace website.
It is recommended to install the basic models, although if you have a powerful enough computer, you can try the large, xlarge, and xxlarge versions.
- GPT Neo 125M
If your computer has 8GB of RAM, you can also check out GPT Neo 125M. It’s a transformer model that replicates the architecture of GPT-3 and was trained with 125 million parameters. It’s available for download on the HuggingFace website .
This model was trained to speak English, so it is only recommended for those who are fluent in the language. Of course, we should keep in mind that it was trained on a database without filters, so it can produce rude or socially unacceptable responses depending on the context.