Why Google's New Android VP Says 'People Don't Want to Hear About AI'

It's been a busy year in the smartphone world. 2023 was the year generative AI went mainstream, but 2024 was the year smartphone makers began incorporating the tech more heavily into their latest devices. Samsung's Galaxy S24 series, Google's Pixel 9 family and Apple's iPhone 16 lineup are all proof.

When asked about his takeaways after a year of generative AI on smartphones, Seang Chau -- who recently took the helm as vice president and general manager of the Android platform earlier this year -- had a somewhat surprising answer. As it turns out, "people don't want to hear about AI," he says. It's an unexpected response considering Google uttered the term "AI" more than 140 times during last year's Google I/O keynote.

"AI can be exciting for some and a little scary for others," Chau said. "So, for instance, Circle to Search, we never call it AI, right? So instead of talking about AI as a tool or what it is, really it's about how are we helping people?"

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Instead, it's about what AI can actually do, and Chau has some ideas about what that could look like. Generative AI began handling simple, niche tasks for us in 2024, like summarizing emails, it'll eventually be able to do things on our behalf. Chau, along with others in the industry like executives at Qualcomm, foresees "agentive" AI being the next step, or AI that can carry out tasks on our smartphones without requiring as many taps or swipes between apps. 

With smartphone sales hitting a nearly decade low in 2023 and people holding onto their phones for longer periods, the question of whether smartphone innovation has peaked has lingered in recent years. In other words, a lot is riding on developments in AI to get people excited about mobile phones again. 

Without a truly helpful use case, AI doesn't mean much. It's up to people like Chau to help change that. Unlike foldable screens, snazzy cameras and sleeker hardware, the immediate benefit isn't as tangible and straightforward, and the tech is changing by the day. 

There's evidence suggesting that consumers simply don't care about AI on mobile phones just yet. A CNET survey in partnership with YouGov found that a quarter of smartphone owners don't find AI features helpful. Only 10% said they use AI for image creation, photo editing, or summarizing and writing text, which are all tasks that AI updates from Google, Samsung and Apple focused on this year.

According to Chau, that could change as AI gets better at working across your apps to become more of an agent that can help you get things done. It's already possible to automate general actions across apps, but generative AI-based agents will take that further by actually taking actions within apps that go beyond surface-level functionality. Gemini extensions, which allow Google's virtual helper to work with other apps, is a move in that direction, says Chau.

Generative AI still has a long way to go before it can be trusted to handle things for us. Although the tech is improving, AI chatbots are still prone to hallucination, making it hard to imagine trusting the technology with entire tasks. Google in particular found itself in hot water earlier this year on a few occasions after its AI Overviews in Search recommended putting glue on pizza and it was discovered that its Reimagine tool could be used to create inappropriate images.

"Tools have been misused since the beginning of time, so we just need to be very responsive," Chau said when asked what the company has learned about how AI can be misused. "We need to listen to our users that are telling us what they expect, and then we need to respond very quickly."

Still, based on my conversation with Chau and other industry-wide developments like Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit presentation and the launch of the first phase of Apple Intelligence, it's clear that we're going to get a better sense of how AI will change our phones in 2024. Whether it'll excite consumers enough to upgrade their phones remains to be seen, although Chau believes it will. 

"It is something that will absolutely change how you interact with your device," he said. "This is that opportunity to suddenly go from,' I have to do everything myself,' to 'my phone understands me and is going to help me do it.'"