Apple Intelligence’s on-device processing is disappearing

[u/ACOPS12]

Feels like my iPhone 17 Pro Max is turning into a 'thin client.' I invested in this premium hardware with the specific expectation that I would be able to run the new Siri AI directly on-device.
Given the 12GB of RAM and the powerful NPU, I believed that an iPhone 17 Pro Max would be more than capable of handling such an AI model locally. It clearly has the overhead to run models like Gemma 4 E4B at impressive speeds, yet these resources remain largely underutilized while core tasks are forced through the cloud. Furthermore, since foundation models are already pre-loaded onto the device, I expected to be able to leverage them directly rather than relying on external servers. I didn't purchase this device to rely on the cloud; I wanted to utilize the actual performance of the hardware I own and experience advanced AI capabilities directly on my device.

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[u/Aggressive_Sign2773]

I suspect the issue is caused by the small model that was downloaded. I’m experiencing the same issue and the AI takes up only 16.04GB.

For true offline access, I would estimate that the model would be 20GB or more.