(Credit: Eric Zeman)
BARCELONA—If there's a buzz word at Mobile World Congress in 2024, it's "AI." Seemingly everything can be infused with artificial intelligence from phones to tablets, modems, and wearable pins. The most impressive display of AI was on hand at MediaTek's booth, which featured the fastest generative AI app in a device. It's a testament to how far AI has come.
Last year at Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm showed off a generative AI app on a test phone. With it, you could enter a text prompt and 15 seconds later the (totally offline) phone would show you an image based on your prompt. The test device was using a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor. MediaTek's demonstration this year is similar, though of course it relies on a device with the company's own Dimensity 9300 chip.
The big difference? Speed. Last year, the generative AI required about 15 seconds to put together your image. This year, MediaTek's Dimensity 9300 could do it in real time. At the booth, the MediaTek test device began generating an image as soon as you started typing. For example, I started with the word "sports car" and the app instantly generated an image of a sports car. When I accidentally typed "sports card" the image switched from a car to a baseball card and then instantly back to the car again when I deleted the "d."
As I added more to the prompt the image changed as I went. Every word created a ripple and resulted in a new image as I typed. In the end, I had an image of a sports card on the moon with earth in the background and whales flying in the sky.
Is this practical? No. Is it fun? Heck yes. What's most important is the measure of progress. A year ago this type of generative AI required at least a little time. Now it's able to perform the same tricks in real time. This leads us to wonder what generative AI will be able to do a year from now.