Most smartphones to feature AI functionalities by 2022, says Gartner

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is emerging to be the next big thing in the industry. Many big players such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Baidu and Tencent are heavily investing in their deep neural networks and power machine learning algorithms that support the AI boom.

Despite the efforts taken by these companies, Gartner predicts that the AI-based technology and functionalities will not likely get into the mainstream before 2020. It is estimated that almost 80% of the overall smartphones shipped will have the on-device AI capabilities by the year 2022. The market research firm has also revealed that only 10% of the overall smartphones shipped in 2017 came with AI functionalities and these belong to the premium market segment.

It is claimed that on-device AI capabilities will provide better data protection as well as improved power management in comparison to the cloud-based solution across a range of devices and products by 2022.

The research director at Gartner, CK Lu, claimed that the smartphones have become a commodity device and manufacturers are looking out for ways to distinguish their products from the rest.

AI can be used in smartphones in many ways and Gartner has come up with a few key use cases for the AI-powered smartphones.

Dedicated AI chips and facial recognition are the early signs of AI getting into the mainstream on smartphones. Huawei is the first chipset maker to add a dedicated neural processing unit on the Kirin chipset. Then came Apple as it added such a unit on its A-series chipset. Even Samsung and Qualcomm have added enhanced AI features to their flagship chipsets.

Digital Assistants are another one that we see quite commonly on smartphones these days. The iPhone and Android smartphones have the Siri and Google Assistant preloaded in them. This way, the devices can process information faster.

Facial recognition is the recent trend and it is gradually replacing the passcode and password based authentication with its machine learning algorithm to provide a safer experience to the users. Gartner predicts that AI-based assistants will get smart enough to even order a jacket when the user says that the weather is quite cold.

Device Management has already been started by Google as it has integrated machine learning into the Pixel devices in order to provide a better management of the device.

Besides these, there are other use cases of AI-powered smartphones such as AR, personal profiling, content censorship, photography and audio analysis.