Canonical VP of Engineering Jon Seager has clarified how AI features will work in Ubuntu starting with version 26.10. The short version: everything runs locally, it's opt-in at first, and if you hate it, you just uninstall the Snap packages. No cloud services, no models baked into the ISO, no forced AI.
The AI features will arrive as Snap packages. Text-to-speech and camera focus are the examples Seager mentioned. Because large language models are too big to ship on installation media, Ubuntu will offer a setup wizard after install where you choose what to download and enable. By Ubuntu 27.04, this wizard becomes part of the standard setup process.
But the "just remove Snaps" solution isn't clean. Critical system components like PulseAudio also ship as Snaps. Remove the wrong package and your sound system could break if dependencies aren't handled carefully. Canonical hasn't addressed this concern directly.
Seager also confirmed Canonical will ship code co-authored by AI, noting that even the Linux kernel now accepts AI-assisted contributions under established policies. Ubuntu will follow similar guidelines. Whether the community trusts Snap-based dependency isolation remains an open question.