How Local AI works

Last updated: August 30, 2026

Brieva writes meeting notes with AI that runs on your Mac, not in someone else’s cloud. This page explains what that means, what it changes for you, what the app does and does not send over the internet, and the trade-offs of running the AI yourself.

What “local” means

“Local” means the AI is a program that lives on your Mac. Brieva downloads it once during setup, and from then on your Mac does all the thinking itself: transcription turns speech into text as the meeting happens, and Local AI writes the briefs, summaries and minutes from that text. No recording, transcript or summary is ever sent anywhere to be processed.

Where your meeting goes

Most AI meeting tools work by uploading your call. Brieva keeps the whole path inside your Mac.

An online AI meeting tool. Your audio and transcript travel over the internet to the provider’s servers, which do the work and keep a copy. What happens to it next is governed by their policies, not yours.

Brieva. Audio is transcribed and summarized by the chip in your Mac, and the results are saved in your own user folder. There is no server on the other end, because there is no other end.

Private meeting notes, no cloud

Nobody else can read your meetings. Not us, not a cloud provider, not their contractors. There is no account to breach and no copy to leak.
Works with Wi-Fi off. Once the AI is downloaded, a flight or a dead conference-room connection changes nothing for transcription and summaries. Only the calendar pauses: it refreshes again when you are back online.
Confidential calls stay confidential. Client matters, HR conversations, deals and medical or legal discussions never leave the room.
No bot joins the call. Brieva listens to the audio your Mac is already playing, so nothing appears in the participant list and nobody has to admit a recorder. It works with any meeting app the same way.
You decide how long anything is kept. Everything sits in a database under your macOS user account. Delete a meeting, or the app and its data folder, and it is gone; there is no retention period on someone else’s side.
No per-minute meter. Local AI costs nothing to run, so transcribe every meeting, not just the ones worth the credits.

Side by side

	Online AI tool	Brieva
Where the audio is processed	The provider’s servers	Your Mac
Who can read the transcript	You, the provider, and whoever they allow	You
Works offline	No	Yes
Where it is stored	Their cloud, on their retention terms	Your user folder, until you delete it
Bot joins the call	Often	Never; Brieva listens to your Mac’s audio
Price	Usually a monthly subscription, often metered by the minute	One-time purchase, unlimited meetings

What Brieva does send

Three kinds of traffic, and none of them carries meeting content: the one-time AI download during setup (sized to your Mac, see below), a small check of updates.brieva.app for new versions and to confirm your license key, and a fetch of the calendar link you paste in, every five minutes, straight from your calendar provider. Our privacy policy spells this out.

The one-time download

On first launch Brieva downloads the AI it needs and picks a Local AI tier that fits your Mac’s memory. The download happens once; after that the app runs without it.

Your Mac	Tier picked for you	Download	Disk used by the app and its AI
8 GB memory	Standard tier	About 5 GB	About 6 GB
16 GB memory	Better tier	About 8 GB	About 9 GB
32 GB memory or more	Best tier	About 25 GB	About 26 GB

Each download is the transcription model (about 2.5 GB) plus the Local AI tier (about 2.5, 5 or 22 GB). Allow a few minutes on a fast connection; transcription is not available until it finishes. You can pick a different tier later in Settings → Local AI.

The honest trade-offs

Running the AI yourself needs an Apple silicon Mac (M1 or later) with enough memory for it; Intel Macs are not supported. Brieva offers three Local AI tiers, Standard, Better and Best, and recommends one for your Mac during setup. A bigger tier writes better summaries but wants more memory and takes a little longer. You can switch tiers later in Settings → Local AI. The full requirements are on the homepage, and the 14-day free trial lets you confirm it runs well on your machine before paying.

Local AI is very good at transcribing clear speech and writing summaries with action items. Like any transcription, it is less accurate with heavy crosstalk, poor audio or unusual names; you can edit the transcript and regenerate the summary at any time.

The open-source components and AI models bundled with Brieva, with their licences, are listed on the third-party notices page.

How this compares with Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, tl;dv and MacWhisper is on the comparison page.

Questions about setup, permissions or the calendar link are answered on the support page. Ready to try it? Download Brieva and start the free trial.