Generative artificial intelligence appeals to businesses, but entrusting your data to cloud services raises a real confidentiality problem, especially for an SME handling sensitive information. Hosting a language model locally, on a Raspberry Pi 5, offers a private, subscription-free alternative. Here is how and why.<\/p>\n\n\n
Every request sent to a cloud AI service leaves the company and passes through third-party servers. For a professional practice, an engineering firm or any organization handling confidential data, that is a risk. A local AI server keeps all exchanges in-house: nothing leaves. It is the decisive argument for many SMEs concerned about compliance.<\/p>\n\n\n
The Raspberry Pi 5, especially the 16 GB version with NVMe storage, can run small to reasonably sized language models. It will not rival a GPU server, but for writing assistance, document summarization or an internal chatbot, it is more than up to the task. Our tutorial Installing Ollama on Raspberry Pi<\/a> details the implementation, and our article on local AI<\/a> explains the concept.<\/p>\n\n\n Ollama radically simplifies deploying language models: a single command is enough to download and launch a model. You can then query it from the command line or through a user-friendly web interface, accessible to all staff on the local network. All without any dependency on an external service.<\/p>\n\n\n The applications are many: an assistant for writing emails and meeting reports, summarizing internal documents, answering questions from a company knowledge base, coding help for a small technical team. Local AI becomes a productivity tool, without a single euro in subscription fees or any risk of data leaks.<\/p>\n\n\nRecommended hardware<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Install and configure<\/h2>\n\n\n
Practical uses in SMEs<\/h2>\n\n\n
Securing access<\/h2>\n\n\n