Are smartphones becoming smarter with on-device AI? | Explained

The transition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) from the cloud to the local device , often called on-device AI, is arguably the most significant shift in the smartphone industry since the inception of the app ecosystem. For over a decade, consumer AI has been synonymous with the cloud: when you asked a question to an assistant, your data travelled across the globe to a massive data centre, was processed, and then sent back to your device. Now, users are witnessing a seismic shift. Intelligence is moving from remote servers to the silicon residing in their handheld devices.

On-device AI refers to the processing of machine learning algorithms and generative AI models directly on the smartphone’s local hardware. Instead of relying on a constant connection to a remote server, the device performs the computation using dedicated silicon, primarily Neural Processing Units (NPUs).