In a fairly lengthy post, Jon Seager, VP of Engineering at Canonical, said, "The bottom line is that Canonical is ramping up its use of AI tools in a focused and principled manner that favours open weight models with license terms that feel most compatible with our values, combined with open source harnesses." Seager continues, "AI features will be landing in Ubuntu throughout the next year as we feel that they’re of sufficient maturity and quality, with a bias toward local inference by default.”

For me, the most important aspect of that quote is that there'll be a bias toward local inference. What that means is if AI does begin to make its way into the Ubuntu desktop, it will depend on locally-installed tools (such as Ollama). Consequently, users shouldn't have to worry so much about privacy invasions.

But how will AI look in Ubuntu? To that, Seager's post claims, "AI features in Ubuntu features will come in two forms: first as a means of enhancing existing OS functionality with AI models in the background, and latterly in the form of ‘AI native’ features and workflows for those who want them."

One of the goals of Canonical's AI push is to incentivize engineers to experiment more with where AI tools can add value for the users. To that end, Seager said, "We should be demonstrating what can be achieved through responsible and thoughtful use, and guiding new contributors toward better practices that will see them using these tools to amazing effect and contributing to the next wave of open source for years to come."