Google’s early innovations in delivering generative AI experiences for Android phones provide us with a glimpse into a highly personalized and autonomous future for our favorite digital companions.
The smartphone industry has been struggling to rediscover its momentum in recent years, having a decline in global shipments spanning eight consecutive quarters in 2023 and showing a 9.5% decrease in shipments in Q2 last year in comparison to the year before.
Despite a sustained downturn, hope may have arrived in the form of generative AI. Although many analysts had looked to the emergence of 5G data as a watershed moment in the evolution of the smartphone industry, it appears that the meteoric rise of GenAI holds masses of potential in delivering next-generation tools and services for users.
We’re already seeing generative AI take its first steps in the smartphone landscape thanks to Google’s partnership with Qualcomm in leveraging new experiences for Android devices.
The two tech and telecommunications giants announced their partnership during the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 launch, and Google’s advanced foundation AI models are set to run on Qualcomm’s Hexagon NPU to provide us with a glimpse into how smartphones will undergo an IQ boost over the coming years.
The partnership will utilize the same foundation AI models that have brought some generative AI features to the powerful Google Pixel 8 Pro such as on-device recorder summaries, Smart Reply functionality in Gboard, and the soon-to-be-released Video Boost feature.
“Over the past few months, researchers at Google have been working to take their massive next-generation large language models and distill them to fit on a mobile device. Soon, you’ll be able to do more on-device with Google applications than ever before,” explained Alex Katouzian, senior vice president at Qualcomm.
Google Leads the Race for GenAI Smartphones
While other leading smartphone manufacturers have been cautious about harnessing the power of generative AI, Google has led the way in a series of intuitive enhancements for Android handsets.
As the GenAI boom was still gathering momentum, Google announced three features for its Search Generative Experience (SGE).
The first innovation comes as a means of viewing definitions of words in the search summary, helping users to better understand words or terms that may not be commonly known. This would empower users to hover over words in the summary to view definitions, related images, or wider contexts that are automatically generated for clarity.
Another feature is ‘SGE while browsing’, this artificial intelligence list of key points for supported articles can help users discover the precise point within texts where their queries are answered. Additionally, an explore section will generate questions that the article answers with links to the relevant sections.
The arrival of SGE, which is available in the Google app for both iOS and Android, will only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of Google’s expiration into generative AI.
At Google’s annual software conference I/O 2023, the tech giants announced a series of generative AI features designed to add more levels of personalization and convenience to daily smartphone processes.
The announcement of Magic Compose was the showstopper, which comes in the form of a Messages by Google feature that offers suggested responses based on the context of your messages and conversations. This feature helps to craft messages that perfectly suit your style and context.
Additionally, Google unveiled a fresh approach to Android wallpaper which can automatically become dynamic through generative AI based on just a few initial prompts.
As one of the world’s largest tech firms, Google has been capable of offering more generative AI features across the smartphone landscape earlier than its competitors. Even Apple, which has often stood at the forefront of innovation for tech hardware, is only beginning to catch up through the recent launch of its own AI framework, MLX.
Google’s trailblazing innovations in generative AI have been facilitated by its own advanced large language model (LLM), Bard. Although the 2022 launch of ChatGPT had been the catalyst for the generative AI boom over the past year, the constant stream of updates and fresh features rolled out through Bard points to one of the most sophisticated generative AI models available today.
Generative AI is the Future of the Smartphone
Automated messaging and dynamic wallpapers are just the very beginning of the disruptive influence GenAI will have in making smartphones smarter, with the possibilities offering virtually limitless boundaries.
“AI is the future of the smartphone experience,” said Katouzian, “and when it comes to mobile technology, it’s what we’ve been building toward for over a decade.”
Soon, personalized content and suggestions will significantly enhance the user experience. Generative AI will be capable of generating fully customized wallpapers, ringtones, emojis, stickers, image filters, and avatars while automatically auditing recommendations, notifications, and settings to ensure that you’re handed a seamless experience when using your device.
By the way of an example, Cristiano Amon, chief executive of Qualcomm highlights how generative AI will transform texting among other daily tasks.
“When you write a text, you think about it as a message that you are sending to another person,” explains Amon. “But for the AI, that could be a query. As you type that text message, the AI is running and thinking, ‘Is there something for me to do here?’.”
“You just said that you want to get on a call with Clare next week and you suggested Tuesday, so the AI will bring up the calendar app and say, ‘Tim, you have these slots available. Do you want me to send a calendar invite to Clare?’ The other kind of thing that is going to happen is: you tell me that you just had a wonderful holiday with family, and as you mention this, the AI is going to say, ‘These are the photos you took, do you want to share that with Cristiano?’.”
The examples above indicate that generative AI could become a highly intuitive personal assistant for us, which operates in a non-intrusive way until it recognizes an opportunity to deliver convenient solutions.
It’s also worth highlighting the levels of privacy that generative AI can bring. Because of its ability to generate synthetic data for testing, training, and analytics purposes, artificial intelligence models can become more efficient without having to use real user data.
It’s also possible for GenAI solutions to actively mask the face, voice, and identity of users as a means of protecting device owners from facial recognition, voice recognition, and biometric hacking.
Could Generative AI Retire the Smartphone?
In understanding the capabilities of generative AI, it’s worth asking whether there’s room in the future for smartphone devices as we know them today.
Generative AI has the potential to seamlessly communicate with our friends, family, and colleagues on our behalf with minimal prompts, and can complete essential tasks in an instant simply by learning our behavior and anticipating our actions.
The greater levels of intuition that GenAI brings may pave the way for seamless verbal communication. So what’s the use of a display when we’re talking to AI? Why would we need a keyboard if AI can predict our messages for us?
The role of the smartphone is about to change on a fundamental level and become more intelligent than we can imagine. The emergence of generative AI will herald the level of innovation that we were dreaming of for 5G and lift smartphone sales to boot.
Whether the smartphone will still exist as we know it today when GenAI fully takes hold remains to be seen, but we can be sure that it’ll steer our favorite portable assistants into their smartest iteration yet.
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