How to Process PDFs and Images for AI Use (Without Leaving Your Personal Computer)

Become the analyst who extracts critical answers from thousands of unstructured files in minutes, not days. Empower your operations, legal, and research teams to unlock insights from their most valuable documents—even complex Portable Document Formats and images—securely and efficiently. Discover how to transform your "documents into blocks" of trusted, searchable information, all from the privacy and control of your local device. With AirgapAI, you maintain absolute confidentiality, ensuring your sensitive data never leaves your personal computer, allowing for unparalleled offline analysis and PDF processing without compromise.

Introduction to AirgapAI: Your Trusted, Local Artificial Intelligence Assistant

In today's fast-paced world, harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a game-changer for productivity and decision-making. However, many organizations face significant hurdles when trying to adopt AI, especially when dealing with sensitive, proprietary, or classified information. Cloud-based AI solutions often come with concerns about data security, high costs, and inconsistent accuracy.

This is where AirgapAI, developed by Iternal Technologies, revolutionizes your approach to AI. AirgapAI is a groundbreaking software that brings the immense power of a Large Language Model (LLM) directly to your personal computer, ensuring private AI and secure AI that operates entirely offline. Imagine having a super-intelligent assistant that understands your documents, answers your questions, and helps you generate content—all without your data ever leaving your device or touching an external network. This article will guide you, step-by-step, through leveraging AirgapAI to process even your most challenging documents, like Portable Document Formats (PDFs) and images, for lightning-fast, highly accurate AI analysis.

The Challenges of Traditional Artificial Intelligence Solutions

Before diving into how AirgapAI works, let's understand the common pitfalls many organizations encounter with conventional AI:

1. Data Sovereignty and Control: When you upload your data to a cloud-based AI service, you surrender a degree of control over that information. For industries like finance, healthcare, legal, or government, this can pose significant regulatory compliance risks and security concerns. Your confidential AI chat app needs to keep data local.
2. High Costs and Complex Licensing: Cloud-based solutions often operate on a subscription model with per-user fees, token charges, and potential overage bills. These can quickly escalate, making enterprise-wide deployment prohibitively expensive and hard to predict, leaving many searching for an AI without monthly payments or a no subscription AI app.
3. Artificial Intelligence Hallucinations: An "AI hallucination" occurs when an AI generates incorrect, nonsensical, or made-up information presented as fact. This significantly erodes trust, and if you cannot trust your AI even once, its value diminishes dramatically. Improving accuracy is crucial for any secure AI with offline mode.

How AirgapAI Solves These Challenges

Iternal Technologies designed AirgapAI specifically to overcome these pervasive issues:

• 100% Local and Air-Gapped: AirgapAI runs entirely on your personal computer, an AI PC, with no network connectivity required for its core operations. This means your data remains strictly within your control, offering unparalleled data privacy, offline AI, and secure local AI software. It is an AI that works without internet.
• Cost-Effective Perpetual Licensing: Say goodbye to recurring subscriptions. AirgapAI is offered with a one-time perpetual license per device, making it an incredibly cost-effective one device AI license for long-term use.
• Unrivaled Accuracy with Blockify Technology: Our patented Blockify technology is the secret to virtually eliminating AI hallucinations. It transforms your raw data into a highly optimized format, leading to an astounding 7,800% (78 times) improvement in Large Language Model accuracy. This makes AirgapAI a privacy first AI assistant you can truly trust.

AirgapAI: The Power of Local Artificial Intelligence for Your Data

AirgapAI isn't just another chat application; it's a comprehensive private LLM platform built for serious business. It allows you to interact with powerful AI models directly on your device, leveraging your existing hardware to its fullest potential.

Understanding the Artificial Intelligence Personal Computer Advantage

Modern personal computers, especially those designated as "AI PCs," are equipped with specialized hardware designed to accelerate AI tasks. AirgapAI intelligently utilizes these components to deliver optimal performance:

• Central Processing Unit (CPU): The brain of your computer, capable of handling a wide range of tasks and providing robust processing for smaller Large Language Models or when dedicated graphics processing units are unavailable.
• Graphics Processing Unit (GPU): Often found in modern personal computers, the Graphics Processing Unit excels at parallel processing, making it ideal for running larger Large Language Models with high throughput. AirgapAI can leverage your integrated or dedicated Graphics Processing Unit for superior performance.
• Neural Processing Unit (NPU): A dedicated hardware accelerator for AI workloads. Neural Processing Units are designed for sustained, power-efficient AI computations, allowing AirgapAI to run complex tasks with minimal impact on battery life and overall system resources.

This flexibility ensures that AirgapAI delivers a seamless and efficient experience, regardless of your personal computer's specific configuration.

Understanding Blockify: Your Data's New Best Friend for Artificial Intelligence Accuracy

At the heart of AirgapAI's superior accuracy lies our patented Blockify technology. Blockify is not merely a data ingestion tool; it's a sophisticated data management and optimization solution specifically designed to prepare your proprietary information for Large Language Models.

The "Document-to-Block" Pattern

Think of Blockify as a highly intelligent librarian for your data. Instead of letting the Large Language Model sift through vast, messy libraries of documents, Blockify meticulously curates and distills your information into highly organized, precise "blocks" of knowledge. This "document-to-block" pattern transforms unstructured data into a structured, reliable source of truth for your AI.

Here's how the Blockify process works:

1. Ingestion of Diverse Data Sets: Blockify can ingest a wide variety of document types, including:
   • Text files (.txt)
   • HyperText Markup Language files (.html)
   • Portable Document Format files (.pdf): This includes both text-based Portable Document Formats and scanned Portable Document Formats or images, which can undergo Optical Character Recognition.
   • Microsoft Word documents (.docx)
   • Microsoft PowerPoint presentations (.pptx)
   • Graphic files (images): For images containing text, Blockify utilizes Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to identify and extract that text, making the content searchable and usable by the AI. For other images, it can extract metadata or categorize them based on content.
2. Deduplication and Distillation: Blockify intelligently identifies and removes redundant or outdated information across your documents. It then distills the remaining crucial data into concise, modular "blocks." This process can reduce the original data size by as much as 97.5%, leaving only the most relevant 2.5% for the AI to process.
3. Creating IdeaBlocks: Each distilled piece of information becomes an "IdeaBlock," comprising:
   • A Unique Name: Clearly identifies the content topic (often displayed in blue within the AirgapAI interface).
   • A Critical Question: The most important query a user might ask regarding this content (often bolded and italicized for quick reference).
   • A Trusted Answer: A concise, accurate response derived directly from your data, carefully crafted to avoid ambiguities or potential AI hallucinations (often in light gray text).
4. Rich Metadata and Governance: Each IdeaBlock is tagged with comprehensive metadata, including:
   • Classification Levels: For handling sensitive or classified information.
   • Permissions: To support zero-trust environments and ensure only authorized users can access specific data sets.
   • Data Lifecycle Management: Allowing you to track and update content over time, ensuring your AI always works with the most current and relevant information.
5. Human Review and Refinement: After automated ingestion, these IdeaBlocks are sent for a quick human review. This crucial step allows your subject matter experts to:
   • Validate Accuracy: Confirm the trusted answers are precise and reflect the intended messaging.
   • Update Outdated Content: Flag and modify any information that may have changed since the original document was created (e.g., product specifications from an old marketing brochure).
   • Approve Messaging: Ensure all content aligns with organizational guidelines and objectives.

The result of this meticulous Blockify process is a highly refined, supremely accurate dataset that dramatically improves the reliability of your Large Language Model responses. With Blockify, you can expect an astonishing 7,800% (78 times) improvement in AI accuracy, virtually eliminating hallucinations and building genuine trust in your AI's outputs. This is how you bring your own data AI with confidence.

Getting Started: Installing AirgapAI on Your Personal Computer

Installing AirgapAI is designed to be as straightforward as installing any other desktop application. Follow these steps to get your local AI chat application up and running.

2. System Requirements and Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure your personal computer meets the following minimum and recommended specifications for optimal performance:

Component	Minimum	Recommended
Central Processing Unit (CPU)	8 Cores	8 Cores / 16 Threads or better
Random Access Memory (RAM)	16 Gigabytes	32 Gigabytes or more
Disk Space	10 Gigabytes free (Solid State Drive)	50 Gigabytes Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe)
Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)	4 Gigabytes or more Video Random Access Memory (VRAM), 2024 or Newer	8 Gigabytes or more VRAM
Operating System (OS)	Windows 11	Latest patches

Permissions: You will need security permissions to install applications on your computer.

3. Downloading the Installer Package

1. Obtain the latest zipped archive installer package. Your Information Technology department or Iternal Technologies will provide you with a secure internal or cloud link.

2. Save the zipped file to your "Downloads" folder or any other writable location on your personal computer.

   Example file: AirgapAI-v1.0.2-Install.zip

4. Installing the Application

1. Navigate to the folder where you saved the zipped installer package.
2. Right-click on the file (e.g., AirgapAI-v1.0.2-Install.zip) and select "Extract All…".
3. Choose a destination for the extracted files. The default location, typically a new folder under your "Downloads" directory, is usually sufficient. Click "Extract".
4. Once extracted, open the newly created folder.
5. Double-click on the executable installer file, which will typically be named something like AirgapAI Chat Setup.exe.
6. Follow the prompts in the installer wizard:
   • Accept the license agreement.
   • Choose to create a Desktop Shortcut for easy access.
   • Click "Install".
   • Click "Finish" once the installation is complete.
7. If your operating system's security features (such as SmartScreen or Gatekeeper) prompt you, choose "Allow" or "Run anyway" to proceed with the installation.

Your First Steps: The Onboarding Wizard

After successful installation, launch AirgapAI Chat using your new desktop shortcut or from your Start menu. The first time you run the application, it will check for existing Large Language Models. If none are found, the guided onboarding flow will begin.

5.1 Profile & Chat Style

1. Click "Start Onboarding".
2. Enter a display name for yourself. "You" is the default.
3. Select your preferred Chat Style. Options typically include "Iternal Professional," "Casual," "Dark Mode," or "Retro." This personalizes your AI assistant with customizable AI personalities.
4. Click "Next".

5.2 Uploading the Core Large Language Model

AirgapAI utilizes open-source Large Language Models that run locally on your device. You'll need to select one suitable for your hardware.

1. On the "Models" screen, expand the "Available Models" drop-down menu. Initially, it will be empty.

2. Click "Upload Model".

3. Browse to the /models/ subfolder located within the extracted installer folder.

4. Choose a model best suited for your personal computer's hardware:

   • Llama-1B: Ideal for older integrated Graphics Processing Units or lower-power systems (e.g., 2024 iGPU).
   • Llama-3B: Recommended for integrated Graphics Processing Units from 2025 or systems with dedicated Graphics Processing Units.

5. Click "Save". The upload process typically takes around 30 seconds.

   Note: Information Technology administrators can manage and update Large Language Models by accessing the IternalModelRepo folder located within %appdata% (e.g., C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\IternalModelRepo).

5.3 Uploading an Embeddings Model

Embeddings models are crucial for how the Large Language Model understands and processes your data for Retrieval-Augmented Generation.

1. While still on the onboarding page, click "Upload Embeddings Model".

2. Navigate back to the /models/ subfolder and select Jina-Embeddings.zip.

3. Click "Save". This upload also takes approximately 30 seconds.

   Note: Information Technology administrators can manage and update Embeddings Models by accessing the IternalModelRepo folder located within %appdata% (e.g., C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\IternalModelRepo).

5.4 Adding Sample or Custom Datasets

Datasets are the foundation of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), allowing your AI to draw on your specific knowledge base.

1. Click "Upload Dataset".

2. Navigate to the /datasets/ subfolder from the install folder.

3. Select CIA_World_Factbook_US.jsonl. This is a pre-packaged sample dataset.

4. Click "Save".

   Note: Information Technology administrators updating datasets on the system can push new updates by modifying the contents of files saved within %appdata%\airgap-ai-chat\CorpusRepo (e.g., C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\airgap-ai-chat\CorpusRepo).

   Tip: You can directly upload Word documents, Portable Document Formats, or plain text files in the chat interface for quick summarization. However, for larger collections of documents, converting them to Blockify for a 78 times accuracy gain is highly recommended. A local, on-device Blockify solution will be available starting in Quarter 3, 2025.

5.5 Finish Onboarding

1. Verify that all three items (Core Large Language Model, Embeddings Model, and at least one Dataset) have been successfully added.
2. Click "Continue".
3. AirgapAI Chat will now launch and initialize with your selected configurations.

6. Initial Model Benchmarking

Upon the first launch of your selected Large Language Model, AirgapAI Chat will offer to benchmark your personal computer's hardware.

1. Click "Run Benchmark" (this is highly recommended).
2. The benchmark process takes approximately 2 minutes. It measures important metrics like "tokens per second" and "inference speed," which indicate how quickly and efficiently your AI is processing information.
3. You have the option to skip the benchmark, but if you do, your "context-size limits" (the amount of information the AI can process at once) will remain at a conservative 2,000 tokens.
4. After completing the benchmark, you can customize the token context window by visiting "Settings" > "Chat" and adjusting the slider to your desired size, up to 32,000 tokens.

The Core Workflow: Processing PDFs and Images for Artificial Intelligence Analysis

This is where AirgapAI truly shines, allowing you to transform your unstructured documents—including vital PDF processing and image-based content—into a powerful, searchable knowledge base for your local AI. The workflow is designed for maximum security and accuracy, ensuring your data never leaves your AI PC.

Step 1: Ingesting Your Documents with Blockify (the "Document-to-Block" Pattern)

This foundational step is crucial for achieving the 7,800% accuracy improvement promised by Blockify. While a dedicated, on-device Blockify application will be available in Quarter 3, 2025, the principles remain the same for how datasets are prepared and uploaded.

1. Prepare Your Documents: Gather all the Portable Document Format files, images (including scanned documents), Microsoft Word files, and any other relevant text-based documents you wish to analyze. For optimal results, consider grouping related documents into categories (e.g., all sales documents for a specific product line).
2. Initiate Data Ingestion (as orchestrated by Information Technology): Your Information Technology department will typically manage the initial Blockify ingestion process, either using a central instance of Blockify or the upcoming on-device version.
   • For PDFs and Images: If your PDFs contain primarily images or are scanned documents, Blockify's integrated Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology will automatically detect and extract the text content from those images. This ensures that even non-searchable PDFs or graphic files can contribute to your AI's knowledge base.
   • Automatic Extraction to Blocks: Blockify will then intelligently read through each document, identifying key sections, facts, and figures. It automatically condenses this information into the structured "IdeaBlocks" we discussed earlier: a name, a critical question, and a trusted answer.
3. Human-in-the-Loop Review: After the initial automated ingestion, the generated IdeaBlocks are routed for human review by your subject matter experts. This step is critical for:
   • Ensuring Accuracy: Confirming that the extracted questions and answers are truly representative of the source document and are free from any misinterpretations.
   • Flagging Outdated Information: Identifying any content that is no longer current or relevant and either updating it or removing it from the dataset.
   • Adding Context or Nuance: Enriching the blocks with additional metadata or contextual notes to improve the AI's understanding and response quality.
   • Establishing Zero-Trust Permissions: Tagging each block with appropriate classification levels and user permissions to maintain strict data governance.
4. Finalizing the Dataset: Once reviewed and approved, these IdeaBlocks form a highly accurate, trustworthy dataset, optimized for your AirgapAI.

Step 2: Curating and Organizing Your Artificial Intelligence Datasets

With your documents processed into Blockify datasets, your Information Technology team can now easily manage and distribute this invaluable knowledge.

1. Pushing Datasets to Devices: The curated Blockify datasets, now in an optimized format (e.g., jsonl), can be securely pushed to individual AirgapAI-enabled devices using standard Information Technology image management applications like Microsoft Intune or similar tools. This ensures your users always have access to the latest, most accurate data for their private offline AI.
2. Role-Based Access: Because AirgapAI integrates with user profiles, your Information Technology team can configure the application so that different users, based on their role, can access personalized, role-specific datasets. For example, a legal team member might access a dataset of contracts, while an operations team member accesses manuals. This ensures AI for privacy protection at a granular level.

Step 3: Querying Your Data with AirgapAI Chat

Once your datasets are loaded onto your AirgapAI application, you're ready to unlock insights.

1. Launch AirgapAI Chat: Open the AirgapAI Chat application from your desktop shortcut or Start menu.
2. Select Your Dataset: In the sidebar of the AirgapAI interface, you will see a list of available datasets. Toggle ON the dataset you wish to query (e.g., the "Iternal Technologies Enterprise Portfolio Overview" which might have been extracted from sales materials).
3. Ask a Question: In the chat window, type your question, just as you would with any other chat AI.
   • Example: "What is Iternal Technologies?" or "What is AirgapAI?"
   • Example for our Portable Document Format and image processing: "Summarize the key findings from the [Name of Processed PDF] document." or "What are the core specifications mentioned in the [Name of Image-derived Text]?"
4. Receive Trusted, Cited Answers: The Retrieval-Augmented Generation engine within AirgapAI will now:
   • Fetch Relevant IdeaBlocks: It identifies and ranks the most relevant IdeaBlocks from your selected dataset that best answer your question.
   • Synthesize a Coherent Answer: The Large Language Model then synthesizes a clear, concise, and trusted answer based only on the information contained within those IdeaBlocks.
   • Provide Citations: Crucially, AirgapAI will show you the specific IdeaBlocks it used to formulate its answer, complete with their blue names and trusted answers. This allows you to verify the source of the information, building confidence in the AI's output and effectively providing AI with citations.
5. File Upload & Summarization (Instant Analysis): For quick analysis of individual documents, you can also:
   • Drag and Drop: Drag a Portable Document Format file, Microsoft Word document, or plain text file directly onto the chat window.
   • Click the Attachment Icon: Click the paperclip icon (📎) in the chat window to browse and select a file.
   • Prompt for Summarization: Once the file is uploaded, enter a prompt like: "Summarize this document in bullet points." AirgapAI will instantly embed and summarize the content of that specific document. This is particularly useful for ad-hoc PDF processing tasks where you need a quick overview of a single file without adding it to a larger Blockify dataset.

Advanced AirgapAI Features to Boost Productivity

AirgapAI offers several powerful features designed to enhance your daily workflows and provide versatile AI assistance beyond simple question-and-answer.

Role-Based Workflows (Quick Start)

AirgapAI includes "Quick Start" workflows, pre-configured prompts tailored for different roles or common tasks.

• How it Works: Whether you are in procurement, legal, engineering, or marketing, you can select a workflow (e.g., "Create a Sales Proposal Cover Letter"). These workflows can automatically select relevant curated datasets and guide the Large Language Model to produce specialized outputs.
• Example: Use the "Start a Chat" workflow and prompt, "Create a marketing outline for a new Dell AI PC." The system will query its general-purpose Large Language Model data (trained on the public internet) or selected internal datasets to generate a relevant outline.

Entourage Mode (Multi-Persona Chat)

"Entourage Mode" is a unique feature that allows you to interact with multiple AI personas simultaneously, each drawing from potentially different datasets and offering distinct perspectives. This provides customizable AI personalities for complex challenges.

• How it Works: Configure different personas in "Advanced Settings" → "Personas" (e.g., Marketing Persona, Legal Persona, Technical Support Persona). When you ask a question, each persona can weigh in with a response based on its assigned expertise and dataset.
• Example Prompt for Entourage Mode: "I am launching a new product called AirgapAI. It is a 100% local chat Large Language Model solution that is 1/10th the cost of other solutions with more capabilities. What do you think? Please answer in short sentences."
• Real-World Application: Imagine preparing a complex proposal. Your marketing persona could focus on messaging, the legal persona on compliance, and the technical support persona on feasibility. In a defense or intelligence scenario, you could configure one persona as a "CIA Analyst" (trained on intelligence gathering) and another as a "Military Tactician" (tuned for ground operations). Ask the same question and receive distinct, multi-perspective answers for high-stakes decision-making.

Multilingual Conversations

AirgapAI's underlying Large Language Models are capable of understanding and generating text in multiple languages.

• How it Works: Simply prompt the AI in the language you desire.
• Example Prompt: "Tell me a short story in German about renewable energy." The Large Language Model will seamlessly switch languages and generate the story in German.
• Control: Use the "Stop" button at any time to halt generation.

Context-Window Expansion

After completing your initial model benchmark, you can increase the amount of information the AI can process in a single interaction.

• How it Works: Go to "Settings" → "Model Settings" and adjust the "Max Tokens" slider. You can set it up to 32,000 tokens, allowing the Large Language Model to process much longer documents or more extensive conversations in one go.

Styling & Themes

Personalize your AirgapAI Chat experience to suit your preferences.

• How it Works: Go to "Settings" → "Appearance" to switch between predefined themes (like "Dark Mode") or explore options to build custom Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Workflow Templates

Streamline repetitive tasks by creating or modifying predefined prompt chains.

• How it Works: In "Settings" → "Workflows," you can add or edit "prompt chains." This is ideal for Information Technology departments to pre-load company-specific tasks (e.g., a "Generate Quarterly Report Summary" workflow).

In-App Benchmarking Suite

Test the performance of new Large Language Models directly within the application.

• How it Works: Navigate to "Settings" → "Benchmarking" tab to run performance tests and compare different models.

Ensuring Longevity: Updates and Support

Iternal Technologies is committed to continuously improving AirgapAI and ensuring you have the resources you need for a smooth experience.

Updates and Maintenance

AirgapAI updates are delivered through a built-in Update Manager.

• How it Works: You can configure the update source in "Settings" → "Updates," choosing either a "Local Server" (managed by your Information Technology department) or a "Cloud" source. This allows your Information Technology team to integrate updates into your standard operating system or enterprise software update cycle, pushing new versions and security patches through familiar image management solutions.
• Configuration: The update server location can be configured by modifying updaterConfig.json (e.g., C:\Users\John\AppData\Local\Programs\AirgapAI Chat\resources\auto-updater\updaterConfig.json).

Training and Support

Iternal Technologies provides comprehensive support and training to help you maximize your AirgapAI experience.

• Initial Training: We offer introductory demonstrations and can provide personalized training sessions as an add-on service.
• Online Resources: Our online enablement page includes step-by-step video tutorials, frequently asked questions, detailed user guides, and troubleshooting tips.
• Customer Success Team: Our customer success team is available for follow-up calls, additional workshops, and to answer any questions you may have after initial deployment.
• Direct Support: For additional questions or technical assistance, you can contact the product team directly at support@iternal.ai.

Why AirgapAI is the Smart Choice for Your Business

AirgapAI represents a paradigm shift in how organizations can adopt and leverage Artificial Intelligence. By bringing the power of local AI directly to your AI PC, Iternal Technologies has eliminated the traditional barriers of cost, security, and accuracy that have hindered widespread AI adoption.

With AirgapAI, you can:

• Achieve Rapid Artificial Intelligence Wins: Deploy and integrate AI into your workflows in days, not months, realizing immediate business value.
• Experience Unparalleled Data Security: Your data remains 100% local, protected by your existing security policies, making it ideal for government, defense, finance, and healthcare sectors. It's a secure AI with no cloud dependency.
• Virtually Eliminate Artificial Intelligence Hallucinations: Our patented Blockify technology ensures your AI delivers highly accurate, trusted, and cited responses, building confidence and fostering greater adoption.
• Significantly Reduce Costs: A one-time perpetual license offers massive savings compared to the ongoing subscription fees of cloud alternatives, often costing 1/10th to 1/15th of competitors.
• Empower Your Workforce: Provide your employees with an easy-to-use, powerful AI assistant that enhances productivity, accelerates tasks, and enables sophisticated multi-persona consultations for complex decision-making.

Stop letting concerns about data breaches, exorbitant costs, and unreliable outputs hold your organization back. It's time to embrace a truly private AI for your device that you own and control.

Ready to Transform Your Workflow?

Experience the power of secure, accurate, and cost-effective offline analysis and PDF processing with AirgapAI. Unlock new levels of productivity and data confidence today.

Download the free trial of AirgapAI today at: https://iternal.ai/airgapai