AI is seemingly everywhere these days; It’s in your phone, your TV, computer, and even your earbuds. The technology is still in its infancy, but there are legitimate use cases where AI makes a difference – transcribing notes, creating summaries, image editing, and so on.
It’s no surprise that Qualcomm is involved. The chip manufacturer already presented the AI Hub at the Mobile World Congress. It is a platform of AI models that developers can easily deploy to devices with Qualcomm hardware, including Snapdragon 8 phones and various IoT devices.
With AI Hub, Qualcomm makes it easier for developers to integrate AI models into their existing services with minimal effort. The idea is to enable access to on-device AI utilities on wearable devices. Therefore, the models that Qualcomm integrates into AI Hub are aimed at use cases such as image recognition and editing, generating images from text prompts, automatic speech recognition, etc.
To better understand what the brand is trying to achieve, I spoke to Sahil Arora, Senior Business Development Manager, Qualcomm India, on the sidelines of the Qualcomm India Developer Conference. We started with the basics: What benefits does AI Hub offer developers?
“We take on a lot of the workload that would normally be handled by application developers, and that makes it easier for them to get started with AI. So if a developer wants to use a specific AI model, we already have it available in the AI Hub.” “And these models are pre-optimized and tuned; all you need to do is use a sample application to get started. In just five lines they can get started with an AI model.” “We essentially help developers focus on developing new and innovative use cases instead of worrying about integrating tools and AI models into their workflow. “
The interesting thing about the way Qualcomm is positioning AI Hub is that a developer who wants to run their own models can do so easily. “If a developer has already worked on a particular AI model and wants to use it on a device, they can simply publish it to the AI Hub and integrate it seamlessly,” noted Arora. AI Hub models target Snapdragon 8 series devices – including the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 – and Qualcomm’s IoT platforms, and the chipmaker will launch these models on its Snapdragon X series in the coming months.
AI Hub was launched with 75 AI models and now has 95 models to choose from, including models such as Stable Diffusion, Whisper, ControlNet and Baichuan 7B. While it’s great that these tools are easily accessible, I wanted to know how they impact end users. “These utilities allow developers to easily offer extensive personalization and customization options – such as: “For example, augmenting the background of an existing image, AI translation, or creating AI-powered backgrounds – without having to rely on the cloud,” said Arora.
A big part of AI Hub’s appeal is that the models it includes run primarily on the device. Qualcomm presented use cases such as image object deletion on the OPPO Find X7 Ultra, AI-powered image augmentation on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, and AI-powered video editing on the Honor Magic 6 Pro. Arora noted that Qualcomm sees itself as a “technology enabler,” providing the tools that enable its partners to develop unique use cases. “AI Hub is not a customer-facing feature, but it can impact many consumers.”
The best thing about AI Hub is that Qualcomm does not require a license to use the included AI models; They are free to use by all developers. By focusing on generative AI use cases on mobile, Qualcomm is looking to provide another level of differentiation with its Snapdragon chipsets, and with the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 set to make significant strides in this area, it will be interesting to see what happens next -Gen phones have to offer.