Digital Science's Papers AI runs locally, letting researchers keep data on their own machines

Digital Science launched Papers AI on 4 August 2026, an AI-native research workspace built by the Overleaf team (20 million users). The tool can run entirely on local hardware — no data leaves the user's machine — and accepts external or local AI models alongside its built-in assistant. Privacy concerns have slowed AI adoption in academia; the local-processing option directly addresses that barrier.