"Smartphones will make us make peace with Artificial Intelligence"

It’s the oldest trick in the book, or maybe it’s not even a trick: it’s just the way the world works. New technologies, those destined to truly revolutionize our way of life, first appear as nice oddities that we can all but do without, then they become important,essential, indispensable and finally pervasive.

IThe most banal example you have in your hands right now: in its early days, most people thought that the cell phone was a tool intended only for those who really needed to always be reachable – from heart surgeons on up – a sort of advanced form of the pager (do you remember the Teledrin, right?)

Now, it’s no mystery to anyone, It’s Artificial Intelligence’s turn,towards which the public has a mixed attitude: they love being able to sweep away annoying tourists in slippers from wedding photos with a single gesture or write a middle school essay in a handful of seconds, but they rage at the frightening prospect of AI taking control of the world and wiping out not just the guy in slippers, but all of humanity.

The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle and nobody knows it yet. The most appropriate refrain, however, seems to be the one according to which We would all like AI to free us from chores more annoying to leave room for our creativity and instead at present exactly the opposite is happening.

Whose task is it to make natural intelligence and artificial intelligence make peace? But the most commonly used tool, obviously, which – forks and toilet paper aside – is the smartphone. For this reason the real AI challenge comes through the smartphone. He is the real ‘bridgehead’ that will allow not only us to become familiar with a tool that, it is worth remembering, is not only made up of bizarre applications, but also companies to understand what the real development prospects are.

We talked about it with Arne Herkelmann, Head of Product Management at Oppo, the Chinese company that after the Korean Samsung was the first to launch on the European market a smartphone equipped with AI even in its ‘basic’ versions: the Reno 12.

What are the main applications of artificial intelligence in a smartphone currently on the market?

At the moment what the user can use is in the photographic functions: from taking a picturephoto to photo editing.

Isn’t it a bit limiting to deploy artificial intelligence to remove a guy in a tank top from our vacation photos?

Yes and no. There are productivity and system-level features, of course, but the one that’s most immediately apparent to the user are the photo editing features. Things like picking out the best expressions in several group selfies and then creating the perfect photo, like one where everyone’s eyes are finally open.

Again: isn’t that a bit little?

No, if we think about the work behind it. Just think about the work needed to remove a blur or distortion from the edge of selfies. We focus on portraiture, photography, taking pictures of people: activity that has been the point of reference for smartphone users in recent years. But this, of course, is what you see. Then there is the system and battery performance. Today there is a lot of talk about generative AI and large language models, advanced AI technology focused on text understanding and analysis and pre-trained with large amounts of data. But many forget that AI has already been in telephony, only that before it was simply called machine learning and at the time there was not much discussion about it and there was almost no awareness of it.

When you look at the last series that we produced, for example, AI is being used in the network to control communication, to make sure that you always have the best signal, optimizing the moment to switch from one Wi-Fi to another or from a mobile network to Wi-Fi. Just think about the reconnection times that there are when you get out of an elevator or an underground parking lot and you go back to the signal on the surface. There is an AI model that understands how you move and how the signal disappears and comes back and uses that information to get the signal much faster than before.

Is it correct to talk about democratizing artificial intelligence through the smartphone, that is, giving access to this resource to everyone? And what will be the next step of AI in this sector?

All the AI ​​is doing processes without people realizing it.Network control, RAM control, CPU control, power control, battery control. Today we use AI to learn the usage patterns of each individual user and understand, for example, whether it is better to have the phone charge overnight or when it needs fast charging versus standard charging. This allows us to optimize battery life. These are things that people don’t pay attention to because the focus right now is on generative AI, so photo editing and video applications. It’s one use case, but a lot of it will come from improving the Assistant and productivity features: everything that helps create a more useful and convenient user experience.

There is obviously a sour note: namely the management of data and privacy. Oppo is a Chinese company that is collecting the data that passes through artificial intelligence in its smartphones. Where are they going and what will be done with them?

Everything Oppo does in Europe is in accordance with European law, so we are fully compliant with GDPR and the regulations of every country we are in. The use of data at the system level, it always stays on the device and when we talk about cloud-backed features or hybrid A features like Studio or Eraser, we have a server here in Europe. Our model itself was trained here in Europe. According to European law, the data never leaves Europe. When it comes to generating images, we delete them immediately after generating them. So we do not collect data from the user and we have no interest in collecting any data.

Are you collaborating with other manufacturers in artificial intelligence?

Yes, absolutely. We are working with Google on Gemini and recently announced a collaboration with Microsoft

Are you thinking of having AI features across your entire smartphone range, from the most affordable to the flagship?

Our strategy is to bring the features of generative AI to more users and to ensure that more people can play it, experience it and enjoy it with benefits in their daily lives. By the end of the year, we want to have 50 million Oppo phones powered by AI.

Do people use AI for fun or do they look to AI as a way to get rid of daily chores?

Playing with AI helps you get used to it, but ultimately you have to do something with it, you have to use it for something really useful. AI is evolving so fast that it’s really hard for most people to keep up with what’s happening and they need some time to get used to it. Having a playful approach is a way to bring people closer to the whole concept. What we see, especially in China, is that users they use some features on average 15 times a day – which is huge – and the number is growing rapidly and steadily. AI-powered features allow you to, instead of reading a whole article on a website, get a summary of it. Or, instead of going through the entire audio recording of a meeting, get a summary of it by key points. We have an AI assistant in China – which we haven’t launched in Europe – to which we add at least one new feature every month. One, for example, allows you to detect fraudulent calls and helps users avoid scams

Is there a different approach to AI between Chinese users and European users?

There is a huge hunger for AI features in China and users are eager to get more of them, to learn more about them, to use them. The Chinese market is moving faster than the European market right now. China has a huge population with one set of rules, in Europe you have to deal with one set of rules, not to mention 23 or 24 languages ​​and countless dialects.

Is there a danger that the development of AI will widen the technological gap between China and Europe as happened with 5G?

In China there is a different perception of privacy and there are different rules, but it is not correct to think that the rules are more permissive in China than in Europe.