When all the industry titans are busy integrating AI into their devices, apps, and services, why would the largest chipmaker stay behind? Last year, NVIDIA released a means to run AI models locally on your PC, and the Intel AI Playground app intends to do the same but with better accuracy than before.
If you are unaware of it, Intel AI Playground is an official app that uses Intel Arc GPUs and Intel AI CPUs to perform AI tasks locally. Everything happens on your devices, speeding up the whole process. You don’t need to wait for results to arrive from a server.
Intel AI Playground is a collection of three features that let you generate/edit images and run a local AI assistant on your PC. Let’s discuss the installation requirements before discussing these features.
Requirements
- Intel Core Ultra H-series processor (Core Ultra 155H or 125H)
- Intel Arc GPU
- Minimum 16 GB RAM
Installing Intel AI Playground in Windows 11
You must do a couple of things before starting the app installation. Since it directly accesses the NPU to perform tasks, antivirus programs might detect it as a troublemaker. So, disable Windows Defender or any other antivirus program. Also, install the latest Visual C++ runtime libraries, as apps need them to work properly.
The latest beta version of Intel AI Playground was released in February, so you can try it. It might be a little unstable, so decide before installing it. After that, visit this official release page on GitHub and download the exe file.
Then, install it like any other app, and make sure you have enough space in the installation location. It’s because you’ll need to download models later, and they can be consumed anywhere from 1-10 GB. If you have a small C drive, install Intel AI Playground in another drive.
Downloading Models
A local AI app is barely of any use without a model. Until now, you have only installed the app, but extra effort is needed to use the available features. Go to the right pane and select the Models tab.
Many models are listed, like the ones showcased in the screenshot. Click the Download button next to a model and follow the on-screen instructions to finalize the download. The app will prompt you to download a model whenever you use a feature requiring additional support.
For example, different models must use the Inpaint, Outpaint, and other features in the Create window. Even for textual prompts and answers, you might have to download a model that’s more than 14GB. So, Intel AI Playground demands a lot of bandwidth and a fast internet connection before becoming a local AI assistant for you.
Is Intel AI Playground free to use?
Yes. The app is free to use because it runs locally on your PC. Even the models are publicly available on Hugging Face, so you don’t need to pay for anything except the electricity costs. Note that the generated images or other content might not be completely licensed to use everywhere.
It’s a grey area as of now, but considering the slew of AI thumbnails, photos, and clips appearing in ads, YouTube videos, and blogs, there might be a silver lining in the coming months.
Wrapping Up
So, this is how you can install the Intel AI Playground app on your PC correctly. You can use all its features after a few hours of initial setup. We’ll soon come up with a detailed guide on that as well.
If you have any other questions regarding the app, post them in the comments.
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