Oppo is ramping up its investment in artificial intelligence (AI) in an ambitious bid to bring the power of large language models (LLMs) directly to your smartphone. The game plan? Integrate its own homegrown language model, AndesGPT, into its devices, and make AI chat features more responsive and reliable by running them locally on the phone itself.

Oppo wants their phones to understand their customers’ worlds

Jason Liao, the head honcho at Oppo Research Institute, is all-in on the idea. At a recent media briefing in Singapore, he confirmed the company’s enthusiasm for AI and how it could reshape our smartphone experiences. But there’s a catch. Localizing AI services on a phone isn’t an easy task. Oppo has the significant challenge of figuring out how to give the phone enough computing muscle to run LLMs without relying on the cloud.

Oppo

This move to localized AI could be a pivotal moment for Oppo, setting it apart in a market that’s chock-full of fierce competitors like Vivo, Huawei, and Xiaomi—all of whom are on their own AI journeys. Oppo’s vision involves not just AI chat but also delves into computer vision tech that could understand and interpret images and videos in real-time. Imagine your phone not just hearing you, but “seeing” and understanding your world as you do.

So why should we care? Oppo is already a major player, ranked as the world’s fourth-largest smartphone vendor. Its efforts to create an in-house, locally-run AI could help it carve out a unique niche. While other companies look for cloud-based solutions, Oppo’s local approach could mean faster, more reliable AI services for users, all without needing an internet connection.

In addition, Oppo’s active collaboration with tech startups through grants and competitions shows it’s keen on crowd-sourcing innovation. From 3D-tracking tech to contactless health monitoring, Oppo is clearly willing to bet on fresh ideas that align with its vision.

RELATED:

(Via)

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR