Oppo to add generative AI features to Find, Reno, F, and A series phones

The phone maker Oppo has announced that it plans to bring generative AI to its line-up of devices from affordable to premium models, including the Find, Reno, F, and A series phones. Nicole Zhang, the general manager of AI products at Oppo, said that the company was democratising access to AI phones for the first time in the industry by bringing AI to affordable devices as well as premium ones.

Several Chinese Android brands have announced plans to integrate artificial intelligence features into their devices. Brands planning to do this include Vivo, Huawei, and Honor. These AI features won’t just be chatbots. They will enhance photos, make notes for phone calls, and summarise web pages.

Xiaomi devices in China have also started using AI now too. The Xiaomi 14 Ultra uses AI to enhance photos, and it also uses the Tongyu Qianwen large language model to power its Xiao AI chatbot. Unlike Oppo’s plan, Xiaomi’s AI integrations are in the top-of-the-line devices at the moment.

Zhang admitted that developing AI capabilities in-house is costly but still wants to offer many of the features for free. In the future, it may introduce a premium tier or payment option to unlock some of the AI features to help support the continued development of AI tools and cover any related running costs if it had to utilise the cloud.

She told the South China Morning Post that if features do become paid, Oppo will make sure that the features are worth the money that users hand over.

As time goes on, phone manufacturers are expected to incorporate AI chips into their phones so that processing with small language models can be done on the device rather than relying on costly AI models hosted in the cloud. These new AI chips are predicted to be a driving force in getting people to upgrade their phones in the next two years.

Source: SCMP