iPhone 16 and Galaxy S24 could be next to join Gen AI

As it turns out, there’s more to AI than raising robot armies to overthrow humanity. The last year has been a whirlwind of change for software as generative AI models have swept the world off its feet. If recent reports are to be believed, that includes Apple and Samsung.

As two of the most popular smartphone manufacturers, Apple and Samsung are set to accommodate computing’s latest trend by following in Google’s Pixel 8 Pro-sized footsteps — by bringing generative AI to the Galaxy S24 and iPhone 16. 

The quest for a smarter smartphone

Following reports from both Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and SamMobile, both Apple and Samsung are deep into efforts to make the smartphone a little smarter by adopting AI into their next wave of devices.

Hoping to take advantage of the impressive power and computational capabilities of the upcoming A18 Bionic and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipsets, both the iPhone 16 and Galaxy S24 Ultra are reportedly set to feature onboard AI capabilities — similar to that of Google’s Pixel 8. 

What to expect

The finer details of these additions can’t yet be firmly nailed down, though it’s highly likely that both will look towards the success stories of LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google Bard for inspiration.

According to Bloomberg’s resident Apple auteur, Apple is in a mad dash to play catch up to the competition when it comes to AI — with someone close to the matter revealing to them that Apple sees its lack of AI adoption as a “pretty big miss internally.”

The company is reportedly in the midst of internally trialing its own LLM called “Ajax,” though doesn’t have any plans on how it will apply this tech to its products going forward. However, Apple’s John Giannandrea and Craid Federighi (Senior Vice Presidents of AI and Software Engineering) are leading the charge on retooling the company’s digital assistant Siri to better suit the AI age.

Similarly, Samsung’s Bixby could receive an AI augmentation too. SamMobile reports that the South Korean smartphone giants are making big pushes to include AI features before the Galaxy S24’s launch early next year.

A source has revealed to the outlet that the S24 series will lean heavily into features popularized by current LLMs, including the ability to “create content and stories based on a few keywords provided by the user.” Samsung’s latest smartphones could also feature text-to-image generative AI and improved speech-to-text capabilities.

Outlook

AI has proven its mainstream potential, and devices like the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro have proven that this tech has a home on mobile platforms. But will Apple and Samsung’s mad dash to join the party have similar results to the initial launch of Google Bard?

While now vastly improved, Google found itself off to a rocky start earlier this year as it scrambled to catch up to the chatbot competition. Bard’s initial reception was tepid at best and did little to prevent AI’s explosion propelling OpenAI and Microsoft to all-new heights — with results so impressive that people actually began to use the Bing search engine to do more than look up the Google homepage.

While Apple will no doubt remain tight-lipped on its AI advancements, we can potentially expect to hear more about the Samsung Galaxy S24’s AI potential as early as January of next year — if the current rumors of an early Galaxy Unpacked event are to be believed.