Portable Computer is Perplexity's new local AI agent – why it's a game changer

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ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Perplexity’s new agentic Portable Computer runs AI locally.
• Local AI is faster and cheaper than cloud-based models.
• But you’ll need some beefy hardware for Linux or Windows.

Perplexity has unveiled a new version of its Personal Computer agent, released in February, that aims to eliminate some of the drawbacks of using AI in the cloud. Known as Portable Computer, this new option relies on local AI models to handle your agentic requests and assignments without the usual online overhead.

Also: I gave Perplexity’s agentic AI 5 complex tasks to run on my Mac – and I’ll do it again

Debuting on Tuesday, Portable Computer offers access to all the standard AI commands, features, and tools through which Perplexity’s agent can carry out tasks with little or no intervention on your part. The key part here is that the models, your files, and your work all stay on your machine. You control if and when the AI needs to hop online to achieve its mission. As always, you can still connect to external services like Google Drive, Gmail, Slack, and GitHub to incorporate your cloud-based files and information.

Cloud vs. local AI

Why use AI locally rather than in the cloud? There are a few benefits.

First is performance. Local AI models can run faster and respond to your requests more quickly than their online counterparts. Second is security. Your tasks are handled locally in an isolated sandbox on your…