> Why would you not use a free version running on your old PC / mac / whatever you have lying around?
Because the old PC lying around can’t come anywhere near the abilities or performance of the hosted AI compute providers. Orders of magnitudes of difference.
The parent commenter is correct: If you want cutting edge performance, there’s no replacement for the hosted solutions right now.
Running models locally is fun for playing around and experimenting, but there is no comparison between what you can run on an old PC lying around and what you can get from a hosted cluster of cutting edge hardware that offers cheap output priced per API call.
Because the old PC lying around can’t come anywhere near the abilities or performance of the hosted AI compute providers. Orders of magnitudes of difference.
The parent commenter is correct: If you want cutting edge performance, there’s no replacement for the hosted solutions right now.
Running models locally is fun for playing around and experimenting, but there is no comparison between what you can run on an old PC lying around and what you can get from a hosted cluster of cutting edge hardware that offers cheap output priced per API call.