Smartphone maker Honor to invest $10 bln in AI devices

BARCELONA

Chinese smartphone maker Honor has said it was working on an AI-powered "intelligent phone," adding that it would invest $10 billion into artificial intelligence collaborations.

In a statement ahead of the Mobile World Congress that opened in Barcelona on Monday, Honor said the future device would include a "personal mobile AI agent" able to carry out tasks like making restaurant reservations.

The "envisioned" phone is part of Honor's push to become a "leading AI device ecosystem company," it said.

Artificial intelligence "agents" are the latest trend in the emerging technology.

Industry giants such as OpenAI are promising tools that will take tasks like scheduling and research off human hands, although for now the services mostly still require significant user supervision and input.

Honor said partnerships it announced on March 2 with both Google Cloud and smartphone chipmaker Qualcomm would boost its AI agent efforts.

The company also plans on-device features to detect AI-generated "deepfakes", or images and video featuring the likenesses of real people.

And it announced new laptop and tablet models integrating the company's latest AI tools.

Honor recently replaced its chief executive in the run-up to an independent stock market flotation for the company.

New boss Jian Li said that global tech firms needed to "open up our industry boundaries and co-create" the AI ecosystem, vowing $10 billion of investment into such collaborations over the coming five years.

Scoring internationally with high-end phones and foldable devices, Honor was spun off in 2020 from tech heavyweight Huawei as it suffered under U.S. trade sanctions.