Artificial intelligence can do so much more than raw hardware

At Google’s official Pixel launch a few days ago, the company pretty much busted the myth that you needed two cameras in a flagship to achieve amazing photographs. Thanks to their mastery of AI, Google’s Pixel 2 and Pixel XL 2 blew every single one of their dual-camera competitors out of the water with a single camera. AI allowed the company to work around the technical limitations of a single camera for their portrait mode, and boy did they nail it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=7cjVj1ZyzyE

Google’s focus on AI isn’t new: it unveiled its AI-powered Assistant more than year ago now. And while it wasn’t obvious to many then where the company was taking the tech, we already had an inkling that AI would play a bigger role in the company’s future endeavors. Their competitors knew it too – Samsung’s work with Bixby wasn’t just for fun, nor is Huawei’s focus on providing their next flagship with a chipset that’s specifically built for on-device AI. While hardware will play still play a big part in a flagship’s success, AI will become the big selling point moving forward.

Google knows it can’t compete with Apple when it comes to pure hardware. Apple, for example, has their own custom chipset that powers their new phones that are leagues ahead of whatever Qualcomm, Samsung or Huawei offer. They’re also not capable of building their own hardware like displays, memory or camera sensors like Samsung does. They’re still very reliant on hardware partners to build their phones, and despite acquiring a boatload of talented HTC engineers, they are still forced to outsource the manufacturing of their hardware to other companies..

But with on-device AI, these hardware limitations can easily be overcome by software algorithms. That intelligent portrait mode with a single camera is just the beginning. Just imagine – software that automatically removes grain on photos using algorithms and learning software. Augmented reality without needing complicated camera hardware. The best part is that since it’s AI, it learns and gets better as you use it more. Just imagine how much more battery life you’ll be able to squeeze out of your phone if it knew what apps you always used at what time (and where).

It’s Google’s biggest advantage over their competitors, and one that they’re currently leveraging like there’s no tomorrow. Most of their new hardware have on-device AI, and that’s something that’s going to drive their products moving forward. And they’re not alone. More and more companies realize that AI is the next big leap forward, and you can expect Google’s competitors to try and catch up with their efforts. Some of them will come close, some might be forced to forge partnerships with the search giant, and some may even be able to match Google’s efforts in the field of artificial intelligence. One thing’s for sure – artificial intelligence will become the biggest and most important race for companies in the next few years.