Apple COO Jeff Williams said that mobile phone lineup of Apple is a major platform for Artificial Intelligence ( AI ).
This is due to the company's new A11 Bionic chip, having a neural engine dedicated to handle the specific machine learning (ML) algorithms.
The chip embedded in the new iPhone lineup supports facial recognition and augmented reality (AR) features. It also enables developers to create applications specially for AI applications.
According to data from Counterpoint Research, by the year 2020, a 3rd of smartphones shipped will natively embed Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning capabilities at the chipset level.
As AI is becoming more prevalent, running AI algorithms on the device, as opposed to the cloud, will be paramount to supporting the advanced capabilities of technology.
AI applications needs massive data loads the cloud alone can't successfully process due to its need for a solid connection and time-consuming nature, even for the smallest tasks.
Running AI algorithms on the device not only mollifies this issue but also helps to increasing privacy, enhancing reliability, reducing latency, and ensuring the efficient use of network bandwidth. However, the cloud can complement the on-device processing of AI-related applications by assisting to support
the massive data processing that consequences from a majority of AI interface algorithms running on the device.
Tech giants have started catching onto this trend, and are now fighting to win the AI-capable chip market as AI has become central to smartphones.
Expectedly, Apple will lead the AI-capable chip market with its A11 Bionic chip. Particularly facial recognition technology by Apple will work as a primary driver of quick adoption of AI in smartphones.
In terms of volume, Qualcomm is likely to take the spot behind Apple. The company, whose processors already account for 40 per cent of Android’s mobile market, has opened up a software development kit (SDK ) July 2017 for its Neural Processing Engine to help developers enhance their applications to run AI algorithms on processors of Qualcomm.
Also Read: Huawei challenges Apple’s Siri with Mobile AI
Huawei will emerge like a powerful player in the AI chip market. Huawei unveiled its latest smartphone lineup last week. The smartphone is the first to have a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) at the core of its dedicated AI chip, the Kirin 970. The chip is likely to deliver faster processing speeds and
lower power consumption. On the other hand it will also enable real-time language translation, AR and image recognition.
Advanced System-on- a-Chip (SoC)-level AI capabilities will be assisting to drive mainstream adoption of voice assistants. Though voice assistants are gaining steam, still there is some work to be done to improve the technology's dialogue systems, specifically in case of complicated requests or advanced
back-and- forth interactions.
Advanced ML techniques work to increase the value of the technology to consumers by enabling the smartphones to be analyzed and adapted to user behavior which can, augment capabilities of voice assistants in return, as they can learn from such behaviors.
