Artificial intelligence directly on your smartphone, locally, without going through a server, is it possible? Qualcomm proves yes.
Qualcomm is today giving us a new demonstration of the power of its latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 by running Stable Diffusion 1.5, the latest version of generative AI, locally on an unspecified smartphone. With the prompt “Super cute fluffy cat warrior in armor, photorealistic, 4K, ultra detailed, vray rendering, unreal engine”, the smartphone was able to generate an image in just 15 seconds.
The most interesting thing about all of this is that artificial intelligence runs here locally on the smartphone. This means thatno internet connection is required to be able to take advantage of it, as is the case these days where images are often created on a remote server before the result is displayed on the target device.
The power of AI in the palm of your hand
The demonstration is important since artificial intelligence has quickly become a central argument for smartphones, the computing devices that are today the most used on a daily basis. If tomorrow, we each had our own personal assistant powered by this technology, it would be much more reassuring if it were stored locally: it could therefore work, whether an internet connection is established or not. , but also ensure that our personal data remains stored on our devices.
The test provided by Qualcomm is also a good proof of the technological progress of mobile SoCs. It should be seen that the independent developer Ivon Huang had already managed to run Stable Diffusion locally on a smartphone equipped with a Snapdragon 865 and 8 GB of RAM, but his demonstration had taken an hour to generate the same type of image with the same definition, namely 512 by 512 pixels.
By reaching this score of 15 seconds, the creator of Snapdragon tends to confirm that daily use of technologies powered by artificial intelligence is indeed possible. Such a short time is indeed acceptable for the least user if the experience is worth the effort.
For developers, this is also great news. This means that the entrepreneurs of tomorrow will not necessarily need pay for a server farm often very expensive to be able to offer their innovations to the general public.
All this obviously remains a vision for the future, if only for the simple fact that this demonstration is made on the brand’s latest high-end SoC. Currently, out of the generation of digital images and voices taken from content already existing on the internet, which are at the center of great controversy, or the search by assistant, which has quickly been taken as a default, artificial intelligence n haven’t really found their “killer app” yet. This use will really change consumer habits. It is while waiting for this that Qualcomm’s technical developments are the most impressive.
Qualcomm
Maxime “OtaXou” Lancelin-Golbery
