What Is Venice AI? The Privacy-Focused Chatbot
Venice AI is a generative AI platform launched in 2024 by Erik Voorhees, focused on privacy and user control. Unlike mainstream AI models, Venice does not store conversations on centralized servers; instead, chats are kept locally in the user’s browser, minimizing data retention and identity linkage. The platform has minimal content filters, allowing broader creative prompts compared to competitors like ChatGPT or Gemini. Venice offers a free tier with limited daily prompts, and a Pro subscription ($18/month or $149/year) enabling unlimited text, high-res images, and advanced model access. Payments are accepted in credit/debit cards, Bitcoin, or Coinbase. Venice introduces a native token, VVV, on Coinbase’s Base network. Staking VVV grants users a proportionate, daily allocation of API usage for text, image, or code generation—users don’t spend VVV but draw down from this daily allowance. Staked VVV earns a yield based on API demand. Venice also features DIEM, a tradeable token representing perpetual API credits that can be minted by locking VVV; each DIEM yields a fixed daily API credit. Venice separates AI usage, payment, and access control through privacy, flexible access, and tokenized inference capacity.
