Interestingly it is Microsoft who filed a patent for DRM-style locking of AI models to verified devices (published July 2026): https://patentlyze.com/patent/microsoft-drm-ai-models-explai...

That's older than current AI/LLM/NVIDIA wave. Many application specific DSPs probably carry their model weights in an encrypted manner. If not, we would have seen the extremely performant face recognition and tracking models extracted from professional cameras already.

Note, these models generally run 60/120/240 FPS depending on the camera range, and can command the connected lenses at ~100FPS (because physics).

AI is actually the perfect use case for homomorphic encryption.

I wonder if this space is explored fully enough at the moment.

Aside from some implementation details, it's conceptually much easier than doing it for a SQL database.