Bring Your Own AI: why model ownership is the next procurement question
Every conversation platform now ships 'AI'. The question procurement teams have started asking is better: whose AI, on whose account, and where does the data go?
5 min
The lock-in problem
When your vendor picks the model, you inherit their pricing, their data-processing terms and their roadmap. If their provider changes terms, you have no recourse — and no leverage.
Bring Your Own AI flips this: you connect OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure OpenAI, Google or a self-hosted model with your own keys. Your rates, your agreement, your audit trail.
Sovereignty isn't paranoia
For government, postal and health workloads, sending citizen conversations to a third-party model API can be a non-starter, regardless of contracts. Running a local model inside your own environment — which Xelp On-Premise supports — removes the question entirely.
What to ask your vendor
Can I bring my own provider keys? Can I choose the model per bot? Can inference run inside my network? Can I switch providers without rebuilding my bots? If any answer is no, you're renting your AI strategy.