FreedomGPT Explained: The Uncensored AI Chatbot, How It Works, Risks and Alternatives

Key takeaways

• FreedomGPT's local desktop mode keeps prompts on your machine, but its cloud features and downloaded models carry privacy and safety trade-offs worth reading first.
• Uncensored does not mean accurate; smaller local models hallucinate often and have no safeguards against harmful or unreliable output.
• If you try it, use a spare machine or VM, download from the official site and never paste confidential company data.

FreedomGPT keeps coming up whenever people search for an AI chatbot without restrictions. This guide explains what it actually is today, how the local and cloud parts work, where the privacy claims hold up, and what the real risks are before you install it.

What is FreedomGPT?

FreedomGPT is an AI chat application created by Age of AI, LLC, a venture firm, and promoted as "100% uncensored" and private. The first release in 2023 was a desktop app that downloaded a language model and ran it on your own computer, so prompts never left the machine.

The product has changed since then. The official FreedomGPT site now describes it as an "uncensored AI app store" that gives access to hundreds of models, including open-source ones and models from large commercial providers, through one interface. So "FreedomGPT" can mean two things:

• The local app: open-source desktop software for Windows and macOS that runs downloadable models offline.
• The hosted service: a web and app front end that routes your prompts to many models, some of them cloud-hosted.

Knowing which one you are using matters, because the privacy picture is different for each.

How does FreedomGPT work?

The local version works like any offline large language model (LLM): the app downloads model weights to your disk and runs them on your CPU or GPU. The FreedomGPT GitHub repository shows it is an Electron and React desktop app that uses llama.cpp, a popular open-source engine for running LLaMA-family models on ordinary hardware. The code is published under the GPL-3.0 licence.

A few points the old descriptions of FreedomGPT got wrong are worth clearing up:

• It is not an OpenAI model. "GPT" is in the name, but the original model came from Stanford's Alpaca project, which fine-tuned Meta's LLaMA. It has no connection to ChatGPT's models.
• "Uncensored" refers to the model's tuning. The model was not given the refusal training and output filters that mainstream chatbots use. It still reflects whatever its training data contained, including errors and bias.
• Memory is limited. Small local models have a short context window, so long conversations lose earlier details sooner than large cloud models do.

The hosted version works differently. When you pick a cloud model, your prompt is sent over the internet to a server that runs it. FreedomGPT says it obscures who you are from the model provider, but the prompt itself still leaves your device.

Key features

FreedomGPT vs ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude

The main difference is safety tuning and where the model runs. Mainstream assistants run in the cloud with content policies; FreedomGPT's local mode runs on your PC with few rules.

In short, you trade answer quality and safety guardrails for privacy and control. For most study and work tasks, a mainstream assistant gives better answers. Local models make sense when data must not leave the machine.

Is FreedomGPT safe to use?

The software itself can be used safely if you download it from the official site or GitHub and keep it in local mode, but the output is not safe to trust blindly. These are the risks that matter:

• Wrong answers stated confidently. Small uncensored models hallucinate often, and nothing flags it. Never use them for medical, legal, financial or security decisions without checking a reliable source.
• Harmful content. Without filters, a model can produce abusive, dangerous or illegal text. Generating or spreading such content can still be an offence under India's Information Technology Act, 2000 and other laws. "The AI wrote it" is not a defence.
• Fake downloads. Popular AI apps are a favourite disguise for malware. Install only from freedomgpt.com or the official GitHub releases page, and scan installers before running them.
• Cloud mode is not offline. If you choose a hosted model, your prompt travels to a server. Don't paste client data, passwords or personal data covered by India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 into any cloud chatbot.
• Background features. Read the app's settings and README before enabling optional features such as sharing your computer's resources, so you know what runs on your machine.

For a deeper look at how unrestricted models get abused, see our article on the risks of uncensored AI models.

Who actually uses FreedomGPT, and for what?

Legitimate users are mostly people who need privacy or want to study model behaviour. Typical, reasonable uses include:

• Private drafting: writing notes or code on a laptop where company policy bans cloud AI.
• Offline work: using an assistant while travelling or on air-gapped lab machines.
• AI research and red teaming: comparing how tuned and untuned models respond, which helps security teams understand what attackers can do with open models.
• Learning how LLMs run: seeing first-hand how model size, RAM and quantisation affect speed and quality.

Security teams should also know the darker side. Criminal tools such as WormGPT and FraudGPT were built on the same idea of removing guardrails. Our explainers on WormGPT and how cybercriminals use it show why defenders need to understand these models.

How to try FreedomGPT locally, safely

If you want to test the local app, follow these steps on a machine you control:

1. Check your hardware. Small quantised models run on 8 GB of RAM, but 16 GB or more gives a far better experience. A GPU helps but is not required.
2. Download the installer only from the official website or the GitHub releases page.
3. Scan the file with your antivirus before you run it.
4. Install it, open the models section and download one local model. Start with a small one.
5. Disconnect from the internet once and send a prompt. If it still answers, you are genuinely running locally.
6. Review settings and switch off any optional feature you don't understand.

Common mistakes: picking a model too big for your RAM (the app slows to a crawl or crashes), assuming the cloud models are private in the same way as local ones, and treating fluent answers as accurate.

Alternatives for running AI privately

If your real goal is a private, offline assistant, several well-known open-source tools do the same job and are widely used in industry:

These tools run models that keep their original safety tuning unless you choose otherwise, which is usually what a student or professional wants. If you'd like to build your own private assistant rather than use someone else's, a structured AI chatbot development course covers models, retrieval and deployment end to end.

What to do next

Decide what you need first. If it is privacy, try a local model on your own machine and test it offline. If it is answer quality, a mainstream assistant with sensible privacy settings will serve you better. If you work in security, study uncensored models as part of understanding AI threats, and read up on prompt injection attacks, the most common way attackers abuse AI systems today.

Related reading

• How OpenAssistant Is Advancing Open-Source AI: The Future of Collaborative and Ethical AI Development
• Is ChaosGPT a Threat to Cybersecurity? Examining the Risks, Potential Dangers, and Ethical Concerns of Autonomous AI