Questions we get asked
Everything people ask us about Meraqi, in one place. If yours is not here, ask us and we will answer it and add it.
Common to all
What is Meraqi?
Meraqi (meraqi.ai) is a generative AI design platform from AiOne. You describe what you want in plain words, AI builds cinematic prompts and workflows from it, you refine them with text, voice, a reference image or a reference video (coming soon), and then submit them for generation. What comes back is editable images, video with speech or 3D graphics (coming soon), all made in any browser. It runs open-weight models with no third-party AI API, either as our online service at meraqi.ai or on your own network, up to fully air-gapped. The name comes from the Greek meraki, to do something with soul, creativity, and love.
What is an asset?
An asset is something you bring to Meraqi and use as reference for new work. It covers your brand assets, meaning your logo and the fonts and colors that make your brand look like itself, and anything you upload for a particular job, such as images, speech, text, Word documents and PDFs. Assets are the input side of Meraqi, and every user has their own brand asset library to keep them in.
What is a design?
A design is how you make something in Meraqi. You start from a prompt, add a reference image, your voice or a reference video (coming soon), and the workflow and tools on the design surface build it with you. What a design produces is its output, one or more editable layered images, a video, or 3D graphics (coming soon). Every user has their own design library, which keeps each design with its prompts, its references and every version of its output, so nothing you make is replaced by the next attempt.
Are users isolated from each other, and is version history kept?
Each user has their own design library containing every design they have made, with every image and video it produced and every version of each. Nothing is visible to other users unless it is deliberately shared, and versions accumulate rather than overwrite, so any earlier state of a design can be pulled from storage. Offboarding, legal hold and erasure all operate against that boundary.
Can I trace which assets were used to make a design, and where it ended up?
Yes. Meraqi records lineage in both directions, so every design is linked to the assets it was built from and to every export downstream of it. If a source file has to be withdrawn, whether because it carried protected health information, lost its license, or was pulled by legal, you can query everything derived from it rather than reconstructing the chain by hand.
What audit trail does Meraqi provide?
An append-only audit record for every action in the system, capturing who performed it, what object it acted on, when it happened, where the request came from, and the generation job behind any output. Every object carries a time-ordered UUIDv7, so ordering is intrinsic rather than inferred. On a deployment you run, the records stay on your deployment and are queryable there under your own retention.
Will my work be used to train a model?
No, and there is no setting that turns it on. Your prompts, your brand assets and your designs are never a training set, for us or for anyone else. On our online service Meraqi runs open-weight models we host ourselves rather than calling a third-party API, so your work is not handed to another company either. On a deployment you run, there is no mechanism by which it could happen, because the weights are local and static and nothing is transmitted off the system.
Does Meraqi train its own models?
Not at this time. Meraqi runs open-weight models made by others, and our own work is the platform that turns them into editable, consistent images and video. We may train models of our own in the future. If we do, they will never learn from your content.
Is Meraqi an alternative to Higgsfield, Artlist, OpenArt or Magnific?
Yes, and the pricing comparison puts Meraqi next to all of them, with each vendor's published tiers verified and dated. What those four have in common is that they are public websites that meter you in credits, and what you get back is a finished image or clip. Meraqi returns images with every element on its own editable layer, prices in plain monthly outcomes instead of credit math, and runs either as the online service at meraqi.ai or inside your own network. It also shows which of them publish what a second of video costs, which on September 20, 2026 was one of the six.
The online service at meraqi.ai
Is the online service the same product as the self-hosted one?
It is the same platform. What differs is where it runs. At meraqi.ai it is one online service that individuals and businesses all share, and on your own network it is the same software running inside your own perimeter.
How do I sign in, and what is my password?
There is no password. You sign in with an account you already have, Google or Microsoft today with more to come, or with a 6-digit code sent to your email or your phone. Nothing to remember, and nothing for us to store.
What happens when I delete something?
Deletion is real. Anything you delete is permanently removed after a 30-day recovery window, which exists so that an accident stays recoverable rather than final.
Regulated and classified work
Is there a HIPAA-compliant design tool for healthcare marketing?
Not in the sense of a certified product, because HIPAA certifies organizations rather than software. The practical version of the question is whether a design tool can be used without creating a business-associate relationship. One that runs inside your own network can, because protected health information never reaches the vendor. Meraqi is built for that deployment model.
Is Meraqi HIPAA, FedRAMP or SOC 2 compliant?
No certification, and we will not imply one. HIPAA has no certification for software, and AiOne LLC does not hold SOC 2 or FedRAMP authorization today. What Meraqi offers is an architecture. Deployed on your own network, your content never reaches AiOne, and the models, the designs and the audit record all stay inside a boundary you have already had assessed. As long as AiOne staff are never given access to the deployment, no business-associate relationship is created. Whether a given configuration satisfies your obligations is a determination for you and your assessor.
Can AI design and video generation run in an air-gapped environment?
Yes, provided the models run locally rather than behind an API, which is how Meraqi is built. Air-gapped deployments are built to order as part of an enterprise engagement and delivered on physical media, so no network path in or out is ever required.
How is air-gapped software delivered if the environment has no network?
On physical media holding the platform, the model weights and everything needed to stand it up inside the enclave, so nothing is pulled from a public container registry or model hub and no firewall exception is needed. Government furnished media, or a re-image before the boundary, can be accommodated where your policy requires it. Updates ship the same way and on your schedule, so the model never changes underneath you.
Can our security team inspect the software before it enters the enclave?
Yes. Air-gapped Meraqi arrives on physical media, so it can go through your own intake process first, whether that means hashing it, scanning it for malware or examining it on an isolated machine, before it goes near your network. Nothing is fetched from outside afterwards, so what you inspected is exactly what runs. Every release is signed and carries a software bill of materials (coming soon). The verification steps themselves are agreed with you per engagement.
Can I prove that content never left my environment?
The audit record shows every action taken on every asset and every design, and in a deployment with no egress there is no network path off the system for anything to have taken. Evidence and architecture agree, which is what an assessor is actually looking for.
Can defense contractors use Meraqi under ITAR or CMMC?
Meraqi deploys as a containerized workload inside an existing enclave, so it inherits the boundary you have already had assessed rather than asking you to extend it to a new cloud provider. Whether a given configuration satisfies your specific obligations is a determination for you and your assessor. We will provide the architectural detail needed to make it.
Does Meraqi need FedRAMP authorization to run in a government environment?
Not when your agency runs it. FedRAMP authorizes cloud services that a vendor operates for agencies. Software an agency installs and operates itself, on its own hardware or inside its own tenancy of an authorized government cloud, is outside FedRAMP's scope and goes through the agency's own authorization instead, while the cloud underneath carries its own FedRAMP authorization. Meraqi's online service at meraqi.ai does not hold FedRAMP authorization, so federal information belongs in a deployment you run. Your authorizing official makes the final call.
Can banks and broker-dealers use an AI design tool for marketing?
Yes, and running it on your own network keeps the question inside controls you already have. Deployed inside your network, Meraqi never receives customer information covered by GLBA, so your vendor review under FFIEC guidance covers the software itself rather than a service that holds your data. Broker-dealer marketing pieces need a principal's approval before use and have to be retained under FINRA rules. Meraqi keeps every version of every design and an append-only record of who changed what and when, which supports that review and retention. It does not replace your approval step or your books-and-records system.
Can pharmaceutical and life sciences teams use Meraqi for promotional material?
Yes, as the design tool inside the review process you already run. Promotional pieces go through medical, legal and regulatory review, and what goes out has to match the version that was approved. Meraqi keeps every version of a design and records lineage in both directions, from the source files a design was built from to every export it produced, so the approved version and its sources can be pulled up exactly. Deployed on your own network, unreleased product information and patient imagery never leave it. Meraqi is not a review or submission system, and it does not replace one.
Running Meraqi on your own network
Is Meraqi a self-hosted AI image generator?
It does that, and more than that. Image generation is one capability alongside video and 3D graphics (coming soon), and every image stays fully editable, layer by layer. If you only want a self-hosted image generator there are simpler tools. Meraqi is for people who need the output to stay editable and to sit in a platform rather than a folder of renders.
Is Meraqi an open-source Canva alternative?
It is a self-hosted alternative rather than an open-source one. The platform is commercial software you run on your own network, built on open-weight models. If you need an OSI-approved license and the right to fork, Meraqi will not meet that requirement, and a genuinely open project is the better choice for you.
Who else offers a self-hosted generative AI design platform?
None that we have found, as of September 18, 2026, if you mean a finished design platform for a creative team, with editable multi-layer images and video in one product, that runs entirely on your own network. The nearby options are different things. Most AI design and media tools are public websites that meter usage in credits, so self-hosting is not offered. Open-source image and video generators run locally for free. They produce renders rather than editable layered files and are yours to run and maintain, and some are self-hosted in name only because the part you run still calls someone else's models. A small number of enterprise vendors deploy generative models inside your environment, usually as an API for developers to build on. If you know of a platform we have missed, tell us and we will correct this answer. Whichever you evaluate, apply the same test. Block outbound access and see whether it still generates.
Does it need an internet connection to generate anything?
No. The model weights and every container arrive with the platform, so generation runs entirely locally and the platform operates with outbound access blocked. That is verifiable with a firewall rule rather than taken on trust.
What if I do not have a GPU?
Then use our online service at meraqi.ai. Self-hosting means you supply the compute, and generative work of this kind needs a reasonably current GPU to be pleasant. We would rather tell you that than sell you a deployment that disappoints. Tell us what hardware you have and we will give you a straight answer about whether it is worth it.
Can I choose or swap the models?
Yes. Model choices live in a deployment catalog that comes with the platform, rather than being hidden in the application, so you can see which weights are in use, substitute others, and pin a version that stays put until you decide to change it.
How does self-hosting affect pricing?
Once you supply the compute, the marginal cost of a generation is electricity rather than a per-seat fee. Licensing for self-hosted deployment is handled separately from the online plans. See pricing for the online plans, and talk to us for a self-hosted quote.
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