If you’re anything like me, you love eating out at restaurants. Being able to share amazing food with family and friends is one of life’s greatest joys.
Until the time comes to pay, that is. It’s fine if one person is getting the entire bill or it’s split between two, but any more than that and things get messy.
Do you go Dutch or get everything to just pay for what they had? And what about the tip?
That’s where Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chipset, and more specifically its multimodal AI, comes in. It includes a generative AI assistant that can respond to a variety of different inputs, including text, voice, images and videos.
That includes the ability to recognise whatever you point your phone at, something Qualcomm showed off during a demo at its Snapdragon Summit.
Usually, being presented with a receipt at the end of your meal would prompt some lively discussion and plenty of use of your phone’s calculator app. Instead, you can just point your phone at the receipt and ask it to “add a 20% tip and split the bill three ways”.
Within a few seconds, the generative AI had recognised all the information on the receipt and calculated how much everyone would need to pay. It was totally seamless, and something I wish I’d had at my disposal on more than one occasion.
That’s one of the many ways in which Qualcomm’s multimodal generative AI can genuinely enhance your everyday life. Other examples included working out the answer to a geometry maths question or recognising trends in graphs.
Anyron Copeman / Foundry
Even more impressive is the ability to ask follow-up questions in natural language and receive relevant results, though I wasn’t able to see that in action.
But the possibilities for multimodal generative AI are almost limitless, making the prospect of it being adopted on the next generation of Android phones very exciting.
It remains to be seen how many Android flagships directly integrate it into their software experience and don’t require users to pay. But if it continues to work as advertised, it feels like the first time generative AI could have true mainstream appeal.
Even if it just helps me split the bill at a restaurant, I’ll be happy.
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Author: Anyron Copeman, Mobile Editor, Tech Advisor
Anyron is Mobile Editor at Tech Advisor, where he’s been a mainstay of the editorial team since 2019. In his current role, Anyron is responsible for all smartphone, tablet and mobile network coverage on the site. A BA Journalism graduate, he has experience with a wide range of consumer tech products and services, including smartphones, tablets, foldables, wearables and more.