It doesn't, except that it runs it. There's no download link or code playground for running arbitrary code on it, so while technically it transfers the model to the computer where it's running (I think) it's not usually considered the same as distributing it.
I think it's a bit more subtle than that. The code of this tool runs in your browser and makes it download the model from huggingface. So it does not host the model or provide it to you, it just does the download on your behalf directly from where the owner of the model put it. The author of this tool is not providing the model to you, just automating the download for you.
Not saying it's not a copyright violation, and IANAL, but it's not a obvious one.
I think it's either running the model in the browser or a small part of it there. Maybe it's downloading parts of the model on the fly. But I kinda doubt it's all running on the server except for some simple RPC calls to the browser's WebGL.
Well, my question is about where it lies within the gray area between fully online and fully offline, so that wouldn't work.
Edit: Good call! It's fully offline - I disabled the network in Chrome and it worked. Says it's 176MB. I think it must be downloading part of the model, all at once, but that's just a guess.
The 176MB is in storage which makes me think that my browser will hold onto it for a while. That's quite a lot. My browser really should provide a disk clearing tool that's more like OmniDiskSweeper than Clear History. If for instance it showed just the ones over 20MB, and my profile was using 1GB, at most it would be 50, a manageable amount to go through and clear the ones I don't need.
Yeah, this is why I think browsers need to start bundling some foundational models for websites to use. It's too unscalable if many websites start trying to store a significantly sized model each.
Google has started addressing this. I hope it becomes part of web standards soon.
"Since these models aren't shared across websites, each site has to download them on page load. This is an impractical solution for developers and users"
The browser bundles might become quite large, but at least websites won't be.
