To keep it simple, it is "AI," and it is better than using something like ChatGPT directly for several reasons. The data stays on your device so it isn't used to train future models. It doesn't ping a large data center along with millions of others which draws more power than you simply using your phone. It removes dependency from the companies and theoretically even if a company went under tomorrow you could keep using the app on your phone, even offline.

It is not a panacea., depending on your personal philosophies. Rtranslator says it uses Whisper. This model was trained on a huge set of non consensual data and using a huge amount of power. Same thing with NLLB.

It also uses Google's closed source MLKit which may include telemetry and analytics, but they say they are going to replace it in version 3.0.

I can go into more details if you need but I felt like that was already getting longer for what was supposed to be simple.