Little Tech, Little AI ⭐

Big Tech and Big AI are over-hyping AI with a “bigger is better” message that only the biggest tech companies in the world with the biggest and most expensive and inefficient datacenters can deliver on the promises of this technology.

But sometimes less is more. There are Little Tech cloud AI alternatives that use open source models or anonymized access to Big AI models. And there are Little AI alternatives that let you use small language models (SLMs) locally, on-device. Both are evolving to the point where they are, or soon will be, “good enough” alternatives to Big Tech and Big AI. And while both should be broadly interesting to just about anyone, I feel that these Little Tech and Little AI solutions should be particularly compelling to those who fear, hate, or distrust AI today.
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I identified the Little Tech companies and products I trust last summer, and it’s no surprise that several of them are pursuing standalone AI solutions in the form of chatbots or, if they’re browser makers, AI that integrates directly into their products.

Proton and DuckDuckGo are among those with standalone chatbots with a privacy focus.

Proton Lumo is open source, secure, and private, it doesn’t log your chats, can’t share data with others, and doesn’t serve ads. It uses open source AI models like Mistral Nemo, Mistral Small 3, and Nvidia OpenHands 32B, plus its own custom models, and not Big AI models. The free version can be used without an account with limits, though signing in will save your chat history and provide more chats. And the paid version is $12.99 per month, though it’s on sale as I write this for $9.99 per month. There’s also a version for businesses.

DuckDuckGo’s Duck.ai provides smaller Big AI models like Anthropic Claude Haiku 3.5, Meta Llama 4 Scout, and OpenAI GPT-5 mini to all users, and some bigger models like Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5, Meta Llama 4 Maverick, and OpenAI GPT-5.1 to paying customers. But access to these models is anonymized, of course, and DuckDuckGo also offers a web search engine with integrated AI Answers and an eponymous web browser, both of which are likewise private and secure. Anyone can use all of these products and services for free, with the expected limits on Duck.ai. But DuckDuckGo also offers a Privacy Pro subscription for $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year that provides anonymized access to those bigger AI models in addition to the VPN, personal information removal, and identity theft restoration services.

For those who prefer to access AI through a web browser, almost every Little Tech web browser maker is doing something in this space. The notable exception, of course, is Vivaldi, which said in August that it will not add AI features to its browser because users who need that functionality can find it on the web or through extensions.

Brave is the only web browser I can recommend without hesitation or caveat and, like DuckDuckGo, it offers an in-house private search...