Samsung’s Experience With AI on Phones Offers Clues for Apple

[00:00:00] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Thursday, July 11th. I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal. China seems to be making more progress than the West in the bumpy race to develop self-driving technology. And both Beijing and Chinese companies are behind the push. We'll explain what's happening.

[00:00:48] And then, to get a sense of what generative artificial intelligence features could look like on Apple's smartphones, look at Samsung. Our personal tech news editor Shara Tipkin is going to tell us how customers are reacting to AI features on Samsung devices and what this could mean for iPhones.

[00:01:09] But first, self-driving technology has been a little stop and go in the West. Cruise, the self-driving car unit of General Motors, suspended operations last year after regulators in California said the vehicles aren't safe and pulled the company's permit.

[00:01:25] Rival Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, however, recently signaled its confidence by expanding its service in San Francisco to anyone who downloads the app. And Tesla CEO Elon Musk has zeroed in on the company's driver assistance technology as the best answer to its growth woes.

[00:01:44] But Stephen Wilmont, an editor for The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column, says arguably more progress is being made in China, judging by the sheer number of companies with technology at or close to the cutting edge. He's here to tell us more about that.

[00:01:59] So Stephen, who are the big players in China's self-driving sector? Well, competing with Tesla, you have all of the Chinese EV makers, including those which are listed in the US. So that's Xpeng, NIO and Li Auto. And Xpeng is a pioneer of the technology in China.

[00:02:20] And it has a package which it calls XNGP, which is very similar to Tesla's so-called full self-driving or FSD software. Both technologically relies on artificial intelligence and perception based on cameras and machine learning rather than kind of elaborate mapping and coding, which previous generations of

[00:02:42] driverless or self-driving technology did. Then you also have Baidu, the search engine company, which is often called China's Google. It has a driverless taxi service, a bit like Waymo in the US, both on the robo-taxi side

[00:02:59] and the kind of driver assistance side, what's sometimes called advanced level two automation. China's players seem at the level of the US players. I wouldn't say they're further along, but there are more of them. These are all level two systems, according to the standards of industry classifications.

[00:03:22] That means they require constant supervision from a human driver. Where do you think stand in China on developing level three systems where a human driver no longer needs to pay attention subject to certain conditions?

[00:03:34] Well, last month, an authority in Beijing authorized nine automakers to trial level three systems, including BYD, which sells more EVs and plug-in hybrids than any other company in the world. So it does look like the regulators in Beijing are pushing ahead more aggressively than their

[00:03:57] counterparts in the US. There is one level three trial with Mercedes-Benz in the US, but it's going quite slowly. What's behind this push to commercialize the tech in China? There does seem to be a government drive to foster the technology.

[00:04:17] We know that Beijing generally is very interested in promoting advanced technology. They have been extremely successful with stimulating the EV sector. Tesla's Shanghai factory, which was built in 2019, was instrumental in building out the Chinese supply chain and in some ways paved the way for today's dominance of the

[00:04:41] Chinese EV industry. It could be that the same thing is happening a bit, although there are differences, with automated driving. Elon Musk made a surprise visit to Beijing in April and got tentative approval for launching the most advanced version of FSD there.

[00:05:03] That was something that Tesla investors celebrated back in the US, but it could also help develop the Chinese AI ecosystem and autonomous driving ecosystem in the same way that Tesla's factory once helped develop the EV ecosystem.

[00:05:22] That was Stephen Wilman, an editor of the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column. Coming up, new AI services on smartphones have won greater adoption than expected. But are the features alone enough to convince people to upgrade their devices? That's after the break.

[00:05:50] Apple says it will soon introduce generative artificial intelligence features to its new iPhones. Phones from rival Samsung already have many of the same AI features Apple has promised. Here to tell us more about these features and how they could impact smartphone buying

[00:06:06] is our personal tech news editor, Shara Tipkin. Shara, Samsung delivered the first large-scale release of generative AI phones in January. What features did they have? Yeah, so these have a bunch of features, some that are specific to Samsung, some that are partnerships with Google.

[00:06:24] One is something called Circle to Search where you could be looking at something online like a shirt and say, hey, I really like this. Where could I buy it? You can circle it. It'll launch basically Google search right from that photo and tell you where it is and

[00:06:40] how you can purchase it. Some of the other things that we've seen are live translation, some photo editing, text summarization, helping you compose emails. How have users been reacting to these AI features on Samsung devices? It appears that the Circle to Search has been pretty popular.

[00:07:00] Samsung shared some information with my colleague about how much people are using that. And so they said Circle to Search has a weekly usage rate of about 55%. So, you know, that's pretty high. The executive also said that some of the new photo editing features also have adoption

[00:07:18] of about 20%. So that may not seem very high, but Samsung has struggled with software in the past. So that is, you know, a pretty good usage rate for them. As Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6, the foldable display devices yesterday.

[00:07:37] What are some of the generative AI features that will be newer optimized for these phones? They're taking advantage of the two screens in the Flip. So live translation lets you talk to somebody in a different language and see what they're saying in real time.

[00:07:54] Live translate was something introduced earlier this year, and now they're bringing it to more languages. It's also going to be supported on popular apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. And if the caller is speaking in a foreign language, it'll automatically translate what

[00:08:10] they're saying and they don't have to be using a Galaxy device. A new one is something called Composer. It's built into the keyboard and can be used to draft emails or write captions for things. There's a new embedded transcription feature.

[00:08:26] So voice recorder is now directly integrated into Samsung Notes. So it can transcribe a recording and separate it up to 10 different speakers. There's a new sketching feature where you can sketch something like a dog, and it'll generate images in different styles. And it also works with your photos.

[00:08:47] So it turns your sketches into these AI-generated images. And those are just a few of the things that Samsung is coming out with. When are these phones expected to be on the market and how much are they going to cost?

[00:09:01] These are going to be available on July 24th. A really notable thing this year is that Samsung actually increased the prices for its phones. So the new Galaxy Fold 6 costs about $1,900 and the Galaxy Flip 6 is $1,100. So those are both up $100 from last year's models.

[00:09:22] Shara, are these new AI features translating or expected to translate into more people buying new Samsung phones? It is really unclear right now what impact these will have. If you think about buying a new phone, the things that you really care about are the

[00:09:37] camera, being able to get the apps that you always use. These are some really interesting features. People are really using some of them, but it is unclear if this is really going to translate

[00:09:47] to much higher sales or if it's going to be something, you know, if people were buying a phone already, they enjoy using them. It could be a little different with Apple though. It's expected to drive what analysts like to call a super cycle of iPhone sales.

[00:10:04] Part of the reason is Apple isn't bringing a lot of the features to older devices. Overall, with Apple and Samsung, these big phone makers adding AI features, how many phones with generative AI are expected to ship this year? What does that mean for the future?

[00:10:20] So International Data Corp estimates that about one-fifth of smartphones shipped this year will have generative AI. That makes sense considering Apple and Samsung are the two biggest phone vendors and they both are including generative AI in all of their new phones.

[00:10:37] The firm also says that by 2028, about 70% of global shipments will have generative AI on the phones. Again, that also makes sense because Apple and Samsung are the biggest vendors. They're going to keep pushing this on their newer devices.

[00:10:53] It may just be some lower end devices that don't include this in the future, but generally it's going to be any new phone you'll be buying in the future will have these sort of features. Alright, that was our personal tech news editor, Shara Tipkin.

[00:11:09] And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer, Catherine Millsop. I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.