QNAP releases Qsirch 7.1.0 with local AI search capabilities

QNAP has released Qsirch 7.1.0, an update for its network-attached storage (NAS) devices that introduces a local AI search mode. This feature utilizes a combination of Vision Language Models (VLM) and Large Language Models (LLM) to allow users to search for content using natural language across various media types.

The system can search through documents such as PDFs, DOCX, and PPTX files for semantic context, identify scenes in images without manual tagging, and transcribe audio and video files. For video and audio, the tool links transcriptions to the timeline, allowing users to jump directly to specific moments in a file.

To ensure privacy, all AI processing occurs locally on the NAS hardware rather than in the cloud. However, the AI mode requires specific hardware specifications: a QNAP NAS from the x74 series or newer equipped with a compatible NVIDIA or Intel discrete GPU featuring at least 16 GB of VRAM.