blog· aug 19, 2026 · 5 min
Most AI editors are websites: your footage goes to their servers before anything happens. Here is what local actually means, and the questions to ask any tool.
Almost every AI video editor is a website. That single fact decides more than people realize: your footage uploads before the first cut, lives on someone else’s servers while you work, and is governed by whatever their terms say this quarter.
For a holiday video, maybe fine. For client work, unreleased product footage, legal or medical material, or anything under NDA, it is a real decision, and it deserves better than a checkbox at signup.
What "local" actually means in klo #
Your media files never upload. The library, the timeline, the autosaves, the exports: all on your disk.A request sends the minimum it needs. Your typed ask, timeline metadata, compressed audio when transcription is needed, individual frames when the agent has to look at a shot to grade it. Processed transiently, not kept.The processors are named. Ourprivacy policylists every third party and what each one touches. No analytics brokers, no ad networks.
Questions to ask any AI editor, including us #
- Does my raw footage leave my machine? Which parts, exactly?
- Is my content used to train models? Where is that promised?
- What license do the terms grant to what I process?
- Can I finish an edit with the network off? (In klo: cutting and playback yes; transcription and generation need a connection.)
- When I delete my account, what actually gets deleted?
A tool with good answers will publish them. Be suspicious of the ones that make you dig.
Privacy without giving up the AI part #
The usual trade is: local means dumb, smart means uploaded. A native app with a cloud brain splits it differently: the intelligence sees your request, your machine keeps your footage. That is klo’s architecture, and it is why a two-hour ProRes project is normal here and impossible in a browser tab.
Get klo for Mac. Your footage will not go anywhere, which is the point.