Category: iOS

Have you ever wondered where your deeply personal conversation with your AI companions might end up? You might have unwittingly agreed to the terms and conditions that allow AI companion providers or third-party service providers to use your chat data for non-AI chat purposes.

If you use Aicrest with its built-in on-device companion, your conversation history stays on your device instead of being sent to a remote AI chat service. Messages, memories, companion profiles, and related chat data are stored locally by the app, which makes Aicrest a better fit for deeply personal conversations, including NSFW ones that you would not want living on someone else’s servers. So, immerse yourself fully in personal and intimate conversation, knowing they will not end up somewhere in the cloud.

For transparency, while “your” voice and transcribed text data stay on your device, the “AI companion” response can be sent to Text-To-Speech (TTS) service providers (ElevenLabs, Hume, or OpenAI) for audio generation if you enable it. Those requests go through Aicrest’s backend proxy rather than directly from your device to each provider, which obfuscates the source of the text data. Additionally, Aicrest data is specifically opted out from being used for model training purposes at those voice providers.

If you want the most private setup, choose Apple’s on-device voice option. In that mode, even text-to-speech is generated locally on your device, so your companion’s replies do not need to leave the device for voice playback. The tradeoff is quality: Apple’s on-device voices are practical and private, but they generally sound less natural and expressive than dedicated cloud TTS services like ElevenLabs.

If you are still concerned, you can disable audio response generation and enjoy text-based conversation with Aicrest AI companions. 

Aicrest: AI Companion, Privacy First, No Compromise

Aicrest also runs on Apple Silicon Macs, with a layout that adapts to larger screens. On Mac, the app uses a sidebar-style interface that makes better use of a wide display. The same sidebar layout appears on iPad when the device is in landscape orientation, so conversations and controls feel more natural on a larger screen.

Macs also have an advantage for on-device language models. If your Apple Silicon Mac has enough memory and supports local inference, Aicrest can offer larger models than the default Small option. In Settings > AI Companion > Language Model, you may see Medium or Large available depending on your device. Larger models generally produce more natural, more nuanced responses. The first time you switch to a new model, Aicrest may download it before your next chat or app launch.

There is no shortage of AI companion apps, so it is fair to ask: why build another one?

For me, the answer was never simply “because AI companions are popular.” It was because something still felt unresolved. Many existing apps are polished, expressive, and easy to use, yet they often ask you to cross an invisible line: to send your most personal thoughts, intimate confessions, and vulnerable moments out across the internet and trust that they will remain where they belong. Even when a company is acting in good faith, that trust can feel heavier than people admit. Once a conversation lives on servers you do not control, it enters a world of retention policies, service providers, moderation systems, human review paths, and the ever-present possibility of leaks or misuse.

How do you feel about having your personal and intimate conversations on AI companion servers?

I have tried several AI companion services to varying degrees. What keeps me from immersing myself fully in conversation is the fact that everything I text or say goes out to the internet and gets stored on some servers run by AI companion providers and some cloud service providers. When you look at the news, there are reports of developers, model trainers, and moderators going through user generated contents for various purposes. I’m curious to know what you guys think about having personal and intimate conversations hosted somewhere in the cloud.

When I made this Reddit post on r/aipartners channel, the responses were divided. Some people said they did not care. Others said they felt the same unease immediately. A few suggested running models locally on a home PC or phone, which is sensible in theory, but much harder in practice. Most people do not want to assemble local models, configure inference, build memory systems, manage voices, and wrap it all in an interface that feels modern and inviting. They just want an app that works. That is the need Aicrest was built to address.

In the current Aicrest architecture, the built-in Aicrest companion runs through on-device local language models, and conversation history, memories, and companion data are stored locally on the device. That foundation is the point. The app is meant to let you talk more freely, without feeling that every meaningful exchange has to be uploaded to someone else’s servers. At the same time, Aicrest tries not to sacrifice convenience: it still gives you a polished companion experience, optional voice features, memory, personality, and a mobile interface that feels like a real app rather than a local-model experiment.

That is the story behind the Aicrest tagline: AI Companion, Privacy First, No Compromise. It is not just a slogan. It is the product decision the app was built around.