Samsung Electronics Co. Galaxy S24 smartphones during a media preview event in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. Samsung, the world’s most prolific smartphone maker, is banking on artificial intelligence as a key to driving more sales this year. . Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence phones: are the buzzwords you’re likely to hear this year, as smartphone players try to use artificial intelligence to boost sales of their devices after a tough period.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, released in late 2022, has generated a lot of interest in generative artificial intelligence, particularly models trained on large amounts of data that can generate text, images and prompts from user videos. Since then, AI excitement has touched every industry and entered the popular imagination.
Smartphone makers see a chance to cash in and show off technology at Mobile World Congress (MWC), the world’s largest mobile industry trade show, which kicked off on Monday in Barcelona, Spain.
“No one wants to be seen as behind the curve, and AI is the talk of the town. It’s the buzz word that all vendors will be using this year,” said Bryan Ma, vice president of customer device research. IDC told CNBC.
Determining gear is more difficult and depends on which manufacturer you ask.
Analysts who spoke to CNBC broadly agree on a few things – these devices will have more advanced chips to handle AI applications, and those AI applications will run on the device, not in the cloud.
Companies like Qualcomm and MediaTek have launched smartphone chipsets that provide the required processing poweriRed for AI applications.
But artificial intelligence technology inside phones is not new. Some aspects of artificial intelligence have been in devices for years, enabling features like background blur effects and photo editing on smartphones.
What is new is the application of large language models and generative artificial intelligence. Big language models are massive AI models trained on large amounts of data that support applications such as ubiquitous chatbots. These models open up new features such as the ability for chatbots to generate images or text from a user request.
“It’s not just about having a chatbot, we’ve had these virtual assistants for a while. That’s the difference, now it’s generative, so they can create poetry or wrap up meetings. When it comes to text to image, it was something that had never been done before,” Ma said.
Another big piece of the AI smartphone puzzle is the term “in-device artificial intelligence.” Previously, many AI applications on devices were actually partially processed in the cloud and then downloaded to the phone. But advanced chips and the ability to effectively shrink large language models will likely drive more AI applications to run only on the device rather than in the data center.
“I think one of the big stories of MWC will be the ability of AI models to run on the devices themselves, and that’s potentially starting to become a bit more of a game changer,” said Ben Wood, senior analyst at CCS Insight. He told CNBC about it.
Smartphone makers say that in-device artificial intelligence improves device security, unlocks new apps, and also makes them faster because the processing is done on the phone.
This could unlock new applications that developers can create, according to both Ma and Wood.
Ultimately, Wood said, smartphone makers want to achieve “anticipatory computing” — AI that is “smart enough to learn your behavior as a user and make the device more intuitive and predict what you want to do next without you having to do a lot.”
Kind of. AI has been used in devices for some time, but the new era of on-device AI with large language models is still in its infancy.
At MWC, device makers will be showing off a lot of AI-powered features – and we’re already seeing some of them. In January, Samsung introduced its flagship Galaxy S24 smartphone series, showcasing the capabilities of artificial intelligence. One of the notable features was the ability to circle an image or text you’re viewing in any app, then immediately search it on Google.
MWC is likely to include demonstrations of AI features, from camera apps to chatbots on phones.
According to IDC’s Ma, the reality is that many of these benefits are not actually on the device and still rely on running in the cloud. He added that even with AI capabilities in devices, it will take “a few years” for third-party developers to figure out “the killer use case or the compelling use case that the consumer can’t do without.”
The danger, Wood said, is that smartphone makers talk too much about AI and not about the experiences the technology can provide users.
“Consumers have no idea what an AI smartphone is, they need use cases to get around it,” Wood said. The risk is “AI fatigue”.
Finally, the highly artificial intelligence experience that smartphone makers dream of may be a long way off.
“We’re building an incredible foundational platform for AI on the device. 2024 will be the year we look back and say this is where it all started, but it may be a long time before we start reaping the benefits of these game-changing experiences,” Wood said.