Making the Case for AI That You Own and Control

The question of who truly has control over your AI assistant is one that many people have not yet considered. With millions of people relying on digital assistants, from voice-controlled devices to smart bots embedded in tools like Google Workspace or ChatGPT, these systems play a significant role in helping us write, organize, search, and even think. However, the vast majority of these assistants are rented, meaning that the intelligence we depend on is not owned by us, but rather controlled by someone else. If your digital assistant were to disappear tomorrow, you would be powerless to do anything about it. What if the company behind it changes the terms, restricts functionality, or monetizes your data in ways you didn't expect? These are not just theoretical concerns, but real issues that are already happening and point to a future that we should be actively shaping. As these agents become embedded in everything from our finances to our workflows and homes, the stakes around ownership become much higher. Renting may be fine for low-stakes tasks, but when your AI acts for you, makes decisions with your money, or manages critical parts of your life, ownership is not optional, it's essential. The current AI business model is built on a rental economy, where you pay for access, and in exchange, you get the illusion of control. However, behind the scenes, platform providers hold all the power, choosing what AI model to serve, what your AI can do, and whether you get to keep using it. For instance, a business team using an AI-powered assistant to automate tasks or generate insights may find that the assistant is hosted on a centralized SaaS tool, powered by a closed model, and running on someone else's server, with the data used to train the model potentially no longer fully owned by the company once uploaded. If the provider begins prioritizing monetization, the assistant you relied on can change, skewing responses to benefit the provider's business model, and there's nothing you can do. You never had true control to begin with. This isn't just a business risk; it's a personal one too. The issue of privacy is also a concern, as when you rent an AI, you often upload sensitive data, sometimes unknowingly, which can be logged, used for retraining, or even monetized. Centralized AI is opaque by design, and with geopolitical tensions rising and regulations shifting fast, depending entirely on someone else's infrastructure is a growing liability. True ownership of your AI agent means controlling its core logic, decision-making parameters, and data processing. Imagine an agent that can autonomously manage resources, track expenses, set budgets, and make financial decisions on your behalf. This naturally leads us to explore advanced infrastructures like Web3 and neobanking systems, which offer programmable ways to manage digital assets. An owned agent can operate independently within clear, user-defined boundaries, transforming AI from a responsive tool to a proactive, personalized system that truly works for you. With true ownership, you know exactly what model you're using and can change the underlying model if needed. You can upgrade or customize your agent without waiting on a provider, pause it, duplicate it, or transfer it to another device, and most importantly, you can use it without leaking data or relying on a single centralized gatekeeper. At Olas, we've been building towards this future with Pearl, an AI agent app store that allows users to run autonomous AI agents with just one click while retaining full ownership. Today, Pearl contains a number of use cases targeting primarily Web3 users to abstract the complexity of crypto interactions, with an increasing focus on Web2 use cases. Agents in Pearl hold their own wallets, operate using open-source AI models, and act independently on the user's behalf. When you launch Pearl, it's like entering an app store for agents, where you can pick one to manage your DeFi portfolio, run another that handles research or content generation, and these agents don't need constant prompting, they're autonomous and yours. We designed Pearl for crypto-native users who already understand the importance of owning their keys, but the idea of taking self-custody of not just your funds but also your AI scales far beyond DeFi. Imagine an agent that controls your home automation, complements your social interactions, or coordinates multiple tools at work. If those agents are rented, you don't fully control them, and if you don't fully control them, you're increasingly outsourcing core parts of your life. This movement is not just about tools; it's about agency. If we fail to shift towards open, user-owned AI, we risk re-centralizing power in the hands of a few dominant players. But if we succeed, we unlock a new kind of freedom, where intelligence is not rented but truly yours, with each human complemented by an 'army' of software agents. It's not just idealism; it's good security. Open-source AI is auditable and peer-reviewed, while closed models are black boxes. If a humanoid robot is living in your home one day, do you want the code running it to be proprietary and controlled by a foreign cloud provider, or do you want to be able to know exactly what it's doing? We have a choice: we can keep renting, trusting, and hoping nothing breaks, or we can take ownership of our tools, data, decisions, and futures. User-owned AI isn't just the better option; it's the only one that respects the intelligence of the person using it.