Local AI Chatbot on a MacBook Air?

Can you run locally-hosted large language models (AI chatbots) on a basic MacBook Air? Does Unified Memory give Apple Silicon Macs a VRAM advantage over PCs, even if the GPUs might not be as powerful?

And are there security and privacy benefits to running an LLM locally on your own machine? How much does model size actually impact performance? What’s the trade-off between speed and security? Let's find out!

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Locally hosted LLMs offer better data privacy, but what’s the trade-off in performance and model capability? In this video, we test and compare Gemma 3 models with 4B, 12B, and 27B parameters running on an M4 Max MacBook Pro and an M1 iMac. The comparison includes real-time performance tests and analysis of local large language model usage versus online LLM services. Topics include the pros and cons of local inference, on-device LLM workloads, and using Gemma 3 locally on macOS. We explore model size impact, hardware efficiency, and whether the M1 iMac can keep up with the M4 Max MacBook Pro when running increasingly large parameter models locally. A focused look at data safety, privacy advantages of local models, and the practical limits of offline LLM performance on Apple silicon.