Nope, they can use your NPU, GPU or CPU whatever you have… the performance will vary quite a bit though. Also, the larger the model the more memory it needs to run well.

With it being local it’s probably a small and limited model. I took a couple courses on machine learning years ago (before it got rebranded as “AI”), and you’d be surprised at how well a basic image recognition model can run on the lowest-spec macbook from 2012.

You only need lots of precessing power to train the models. Using the models can be done on regular hardware.

Running AI models isn’t that resource intensive. Training the models is the difficult part.

The feature will obviously just be disabled on machines that don’t support it.