Google Advances Private AI with Homomorphic Encryption Compiler HEIR
Original: Google is making private AI practical with homomorphic encryption
Why This Matters
HEIR lowers the barrier to privacy-preserving AI, opening regulated industries to cloud AI adoption.
Google has unveiled HEIR (Homomorphic Encryption Intermediate Representation), an open-source compiler that converts pre-trained AI models to operate on encrypted data. The tool, added to Google's Private Computing Toolkit, aims to make private AI inference accessible to non-expert developers in healthcare, finance, and other sensitive sectors.
Google has officially showcased HEIR, an open-source compiler toolchain designed to make homomorphic encryption practical for AI applications. HEIR can automatically convert existing pre-trained AI models—originally built to process unencrypted data—so they can perform inference directly on encrypted inputs, without ever exposing underlying user data to the service provider.
Homomorphic encryption allows computations to be performed on ciphertexts, returning encrypted results that only the data owner can decrypt. This eliminates a long-standing trade-off in AI services: standard end-to-end encryption prevents service providers from analyzing user data, while unencrypted processing exposes sensitive information. Sectors such as healthcare and finance, where strict data-sharing regulations apply, stand to benefit most.
Google notes that manually converting a program to use homomorphic encryption efficiently has historically required a dedicated team of cryptographers. HEIR is designed to remove that barrier, with a stated goal of becoming a "one-click solution" for developers without cryptography expertise. The project was first announced in 2023 and has since attracted collaboration from companies building hardware accelerators for homomorphic encryption.
HEIR is part of Google's broader Private Computing Toolkit, which also includes differential privacy, private set membership, private information retrieval, and secure enclaves on Google Cloud. Unlike hardware-based approaches, homomorphic encryption's privacy guarantees are purely cryptographic. One featured demo allows a cloud service to deliver personalized content recommendations without the server being able to view the user's data.