More and more smartphones now are shipping with AI features, whether or not most buyers are interested. Now, Motorola is joining the party with its new Moto AI range of features.
Motorola is adding AI capabilities to its range of smartphones, which is currently testing out in a closed beta stage. It’s not clear if these features will arrive to new phones or if they will be rolled out to older phones as well. The new Moto AI features mostly follow the “minimal, but useful additions” mantra that the company currently applies to its Android software at large.
There are three AI features to start. “Catch me up” provides a prioritized summary of your missed notifications, saving you from endless scrolling. The “Pay attention” feature records, transcribes, and summarizes conversations or lectures, ensuring you don’t miss crucial details. Finally, “Remember this” captures live moments or on-screen information, instantly saving them with AI-generated insights. You can think of it as an intelligent assistant that transforms snapshots into rich memories with context and facts readily available. You also have to manually take these snapshots, just in case you were worried this was a Windows Recall situation all over again.
There’s not really anything earth-shattering here in terms of these three smaller features, as these are minimal additions. Still, we can’t help but wonder whether they are actually necessary. All smartphone makers seem to be developing their own AI tools in order to say they have jumped on the AI bandwagon, and some of it is really gimmicky stuff—the Pixel Wallpapers app that comes with Pixel smartphones and generates AI wallpapers on the fly is cool to be used like three times before you switch to regular, artist-made wallpapers.
One that does seem more exciting, though, is a wider-reaching assistant feature that will understand user behavior and offer personalized assistance. This one is pretty cool because it’s eventually meant to be able to check out the tasks you perform every day, navigate through your phone and automate tasks such as ordering coffee, booking rides, setting alarms, and selecting playlists. We wouldn’t be surprised if this one takes a little bit more time in the oven than the other features.
Whether these new AI features Motorola is launching will work well and be used a lot by users remains to be seen.
