Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the technological developments that has been most widely deployed in recent years, having a specially consolidated presence on our mobile devices. According to the international consulting firm Gartner, by 2022 approximately 80% of mobile devices will be equipped with some type of AI.
In this line, MediaTek, one of the main companies involved in the development of technologies to facilitate the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI), organized in our country a workshop by experts, to expose the advances in this field and how they will revolutionize the way in which we interact with various devices starting with our Smartphones.
The workshop was divided into four segments: an introduction to AI technology, to understand its definition and scope; the AI ecosystem, with its various current uses and influence on the lives of users; a demonstration of AI Technologies applied to smartphones, with examples of the functionalities that we can already find, to close with AI Trends. Some of the most relevant points of the presentation were:

APU processors: During the exhibition one of the highlights was the presentation of the APU processors (Artificial Intelligence Processing Unit), which were specifically designed to execute the most complex functions of Artificial intelligence while maintaining efficiency in rapid response with low battery consumption On the devices, integrated into different MediaTek chipset ranges (eg Helio P60, P22), it provides a new level of performance for AI applications on different devices.

Neuro Pilot: MediaTek has been working on a development ecosystem for Artificial Intelligence, making use of its APU processing unit which works as a "Neuron", which allows executing different functionalities. Neuro Pilot allows developers to use the different software development tools on the market (Google / Caffe 2 Tensor Flow) and combine it with the execution of tasks on the device through the APU, to get the most out of the device hardware , providing better responses in time and performance for different applications. On this technology we will see different applications on Smartphones for the coming years.

AI functionalities: Some of the applications in which we can see the use of APU processors and the Neuro Pilot ecosystem are:

FACE ID: One of the functions with the highest implementation range is advanced facial recognition, thanks to new recognition algorithms implemented in Smartphones, we can find a new level of security in which we will not only use keys to access specialized applications (example : Banking), but we can incorporate another type of biometric recognition as a 3D face, which will allow our Smartphones to keep our information more secure and less vulnerable to external hackers.
Smart album: The way in which we interact with our Image / Video Album will change, thanks to AI technologies, content searches will change as Smartphones will be able to understand specific instructions such as searching for actions such as: “images of people running ”, Or images of specific elements:“ fruits ”with total precision and speed. Allowing to recognize any parameter and making the experience of use much more flexible.
Smart Cameras: Our smartphones will be able to use artificial intelligence algorithms to adapt the capture of photographs to the environment, following and photographing specific targets, implementing facial beautification functions in real time and making the experience for taking photographs much easier and more adaptable to the environment.
Smart cameras 2.0: One of the trends in the coming years is the use of our Smartphones' cameras not only to take pictures, but to interact with our environment. The camera will be able to recognize different elements around us and thanks to the use of technologies such as Augmented reality (AR) and Artificial intelligence (AI), it will identify and suggest different contents. Thus, the next time we are making purchases from our pantry / market, you can show us reviews of a product or suggest a promotional price.
Targeting: The new AI algorithms will allow our devices to learn day by day from the habits of their user, learning our behavior and tastes, in this way our Smartphone will adapt to our way of use, allowing to extend the battery life, optimization of resources like memory and most importantly taking the user experience to a higher level.
Alexander Rojas, Business Development Manager for Latin America at MediaTek, commented on the advantages of the evolution of artificial intelligence and the transformation it will bring to users. "AI is creating a revolution in the way we use our smartphones, thanks to the technology implemented by MediaTek it will be possible to combine the user experience with optimal device performance," he said.
At the end of the meeting, Hugo Simg, Manager of MediaTek for Latin America, presented new models of mid-range phones from the Nokia 5.1 Plus brands, which already operate with AI technologies thanks to MediaTek Helio P60 / P22 chipsets. The executive anticipated that, although the models are already available in some countries, in Mexico they will only begin to be seen in the course of the first four months of 2019, thus renewing the mid-range segment with products that offer the same benefits as the equipment Premium, but at very competitive prices.
Improvements to the user experience
One aspect that MediaTek highlighted in its presentation is that for AI to be applied to smartphones, providing a superior experience, it is necessary to correctly combine software and hardware, so that these new equipment process the information at very high speed.
“AI smartphones are faster because we equip them with independent processors to assign these tasks. This allows the possibility of performing complex operations, thanks to the integration of "NeuroPilot", commented Alexander Rojas.