What does an AI phone look like? Apple and Samsung have completely different views

AI smartphones have also become the next battleground for tech giants.

Apple unveiled a major move at the WWDC conference on the 11th: introducing Apple Intelligence. This time, Apple partnered with OpenAI to integrate GPT-4o into Siri, allowing users to rewrite messages, generate images, and have Siri answer more complex questions on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

At first glance, isn't this Apple Intelligence similar to Samsung's AI phone Galaxy S24 series launched in January this year?

Samsung's AI assistant is called Galaxy AI, which, like Apple Intelligence, has functions such as editing photos, summarizing, proofreading, and rewriting text and notes. However, upon closer inspection, Apple and Samsung have fundamentally different philosophies on how AI enhances the smartphone experience.

Apple sees AI smartphones as deep companions for users, while Samsung focuses more on having AI perform specific tasks, such as language translation and image editing.

Apple views AI smartphones as deep companions for users

Compared to Samsung and other competitors, Apple started relatively late in the field of generative AI, but it is trying to catch up by launching "Apple Intelligence" to help users manage all data, files, photos, and messages on their phones.

Craig Federighi, Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, said at WWDC, "Apple Intelligence needs to be fully integrated into the user experience, it needs intuitive instructions, and you need to provide context to maintain the best output."

The core of Apple Intelligence is the new version of Siri, which, with the addition of GPT, is better at finding things on the device. Even if you don't remember whether a recipe sent by a friend is stored in a message or a note file, Siri can help you find it.

Moreover, Siri can index photos, calendar events, and files, and reference information from messages and emails. This means that no matter where the data is stored, it can be retrieved in a timely manner. For example, when filling out a form that requires a driver's license number, if your driver's license photo is stored on your phone, Siri can input the driver's license number for you.

Beyond just finding things on the device, Apple also hopes Siri can become the user's "right-hand man." In the WWDC keynote, Apple demonstrated how Siri can call up photos of specific people - "show me a photo of Stacy in New York wearing a pink coat" - then edit that photo and add it to a note using voice commands.

Apple Intelligence has many features different from Samsung's Galaxy AI, but these features are not exclusive to Apple.

For example, the function of referencing information from text and emails is also available in Microsoft's Copilot assistant, and Google's Gemini, after an upgrade, can also reference content on the screen, just like Siri Given the close collaboration between Google and Samsung, this feature is likely to appear on Samsung's AI mobile devices soon.

Various signs indicate that Apple is not the only company hoping for AI assistants to become users' personal assistants.

Samsung's AI phones focus more on communication and content creation

In contrast, Samsung believes that AI phones should focus on improving communication and productivity efficiency. Samsung's intelligent assistant Galaxy AI not only can rewrite and proofread text in different styles, but also allows you to translate multiple languages in real-time during phone calls and translate the entire conversation into different languages.

Samsung's emphasis on the translation function of AI phones even makes Apple "ashamed", as Apple barely discussed Apple's intelligent language translation function at the WWDC keynote.

At the same time, Samsung pays great attention to the content creation function of AI phones. The generative editing function of Galaxy AI not only makes it easier for you to crop images, but also allows you to preview video clips in slow motion, summarize and translate notes, and "select and search". As long as you circle any content on the phone screen, you can initiate a Google search.

Overall, Apple and Samsung have different initial understandings of AI phones, but as time goes on and AI technology spreads, their functions on AI phones will continue to overlap.

Considering that Samsung plans to announce new foldable phones this summer, and Apple will release a new iPhone in September, we will soon see the changes brought by the next generation of AI phones from Samsung and Apple