Someone Has Created a Real Artificial Intelligence Clippy
AI always reminds me of Clippy, the infamous talking paperclip added to Microsoft Office in the ’90s. The little guy was annoying to users, based on a misguided understanding of how people want to use technology, and had a habit of popping up even after you’d specifically turned him off.
It was probably inevitable that someone would make a tool that combined large language models with a 30-year-old animated paperclip. That someone is developer Felix Rieseberg , who created a Windows 95-themed app called Clippy that can run real large language models on your computer. The app is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux devices, and works offline.
Clippy looks just like you remember, and hovers over whatever you’re working on. It cycles through several animations. Tap it to start a chat, just like you would with any other large language model. The app works offline, meaning you can chat with Clippy on a train or plane if you really want to.
To be clear, this isn’t meant to be a functional tool. Riesberg calls it an art project he did simply because it’s fun. “If you get even a little chuckle out of this, I’d love to hear it,” the project’s About page reads.
Still, Clippy is probably the easiest tool I’ve come across for running large language models locally on a computer. Just download the app, install it, then choose which model you want to run in the Windows 95 theme settings. The default, Google’s Gemma, works well enough.
This app is based on Ollama , an open-source app created by Meta that lets you run a bunch of large language models on your computer. Clippy offers eight different models to try out. Generally, the larger they are, the more system resources they take to use – you can try out a few different ones to get a feel for how well they work on your device. It’s fun, if not entirely practical. Clippy can’t access the internet, so you can’t get real-time information, and the answers aren’t as sophisticated as what you’d get from a top-notch AI service.
There are a few other things you can change in the settings, including the default font and whether Clippy should always be on top. You can also write a custom system prompt for Clippy, allowing you to take control of his personality.
This AI-powered art project won’t change the world, and it shouldn’t. It’s a work of art, like this Clippy-inspired musical masterpiece from earlier this year.