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Nano, Google’s smallest AI mannequin in its generative Gemini sequence, won’t be accessible on Pixel 8 handsets on account of “some {hardware} limitations.”
Introduced in December, Nano runs on high-end Android smartphones equivalent to Google’s newest Pixel 8 Professional and Samsung’s Galaxy S24 line. The mannequin gives numerous typical AI options of the day on these gadgets, equivalent to summarizing audio recordings as textual content and Magic Compose, which may robotically generate fast replies to textual content messages for you.
These capabilities won’t be coming to the Pixel 8, although, which just like the Professional went on sale in October. In a panel dialogue throughout the newest episode of The Android Present, Terence Zhang, an engineer engaged on generative AI on Google Android, stated this was right down to “some {hardware} limitations.” (Skip to about 42:57 within the video beneath.)
It isn’t clear what these limitations are precisely, contemplating each the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Professional gadgets are outfitted with the identical Google Tensor G3 processor and CPU and GPU cores. The Pixel 8 Professional, crucially, has extra reminiscence. The 8 has 8GB of RAM and the 8 Professional has 12GB, and by the sounds of it, that 8GB will cramp the efficiency of the mannequin. So, no Nano for the Pixel 8.
Google declined to touch upon the file.
Fairly competent massive language fashions are usually reminiscence and compute intensive, making them tough to run on smartphones, even ones with 8GB of DRAM.
Google developed AICore, an Android system service functions can use to make Google Nano carry out ML inference duties, equivalent to textual content technology, on the system utilizing no matter {hardware} acceleration is at hand.
Zhang stated AICore is principally an API floor for Gemini Nano, and that this mannequin is constrained by the computing energy of the system. On telephones the place there isn’t any Nano, such because the Pixel 8, there isn’t any AICore to make use of.
AICore is helpful in that it permits apps to faucet into Gemini Nano on the native system with no need an web connection to some distant cloud service. All of the textual content generated by the mannequin is personal because the knowledge does not go away the smartphone, which additionally reduces latency, making it sooner to run. “Lastly, and most significantly, it is free,” Zhang stated. Since all of the workloads are run utilizing the {hardware} on gadgets, it does not value a dime to work together with the mannequin, not like accessing an LLM from the cloud.
“AICore is presently solely accessible on Google Pixel 8 Professional and Samsung S24 Sequence gadgets,” Google makes clear within the developer documentation.
The net large is said to be planning to roll out extra AI options for its voice-controlled Assistant, powered by its bigger Gemini Professional and Extremely fashions, subsequent 12 months on its Pixel gadgets. ®
