Last year, most of us didn’t know how beneficial would artificial intelligence features be beyond creating avatars. Will AI resonate with the masses? Samsung took a leap of faith by becoming one of the earliest champions of the technology through a consumer gadget. It introduced several Galaxy AI features on the Galaxy S24 series. It was a hit. This year, Samsung has extended its lead in the AI space by introducing more features with the Galaxy S25 series.

“The smartphone is at the centre (of our lives) as it’s personal to you and you carry it everywhere. Further, all consumer electronic products will implement AI. The control tower of all these (AI devices) will be in the smartphone. Everything starts with the phone itself,” said JB Park, president and CEO, Samsung Southwest Asia, after reaching San Jose following a long flight.

Samsung has chosen a first-of-its-kind customised Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform for Galaxy chipset to deliver greater on-device processing power for Galaxy AI. On Galaxy S25, the Personal Data Engine powers personalised AI features by safely analysing data on-device to deliver bespoke experiences that take into consideration your preferences and usage patterns.

Soon JB started talking use cases. “There are two aspects. One is productivity and the other is, say, entertainment, or personalised use case. In productivity, AI will assist in creating documents, helping you to formalise in a much better way, which is something available with multiple partners, like Microsoft Copilot. We work closely with Microsoft to develop solutions not only in the mobile (space) but across different consumer categories.

Samsung Galaxy S25 series gets many of the AI tasks done securely on the device. Mathures Paul

“Personalisation or entertainment is just one step that we are seeing today, but beyond that, AI will assist in multiple ways to make your lifestyle become easier. When you come home, AI can set up all your home appliances, the content you enjoy will be easier to access and shopping experience will be much better than Googling through what you are trying to find. AI is at its beginning,” said the Samsung executive.

The question everybody is asking is how long can tech companies like Samsung keep offering AI features without charging consumers. After all, AI features are expensive. At least for the time being Galaxy AI features are free. But monetisation will happen across industries at some point.

JB is sure that people are checking out AI features while buying devices. It is one of the top features dictating purchase.

“What is the innovation rate we can provide to a smartphone — bigger screen, curved, fast charging… all these have come to a curve that is not exponentially going up, which means you cannot have an eight- or nine-inch smartphone. It will become a tablet, right? Then what is the next thing that consumers are looking at… and that need not be hardware, I think it’s software, the UI and users can benefit from AI.”

We have already seen how AI can be accessible on the phone. It can help you write and rewrite an email or react to a text. There’s AI that can turn a nice picture of food into something shareable. AI on our phones has been offering one trick after another: sometimes funny and sometimes interesting. It’s time for it to be deeply meaningful.

“We’re in the beginning of the AI era, the future will unfold in a way that nobody knows, just like when we first experienced the era of the Internet. At first, when we experienced the Internet, we never thought that we would have Zomato deliver to our homes using the Internet. You can monitor the delivery person. Nobody could have imagined this. AI will unfold in multiple ways and industries. We will have to see how AI can be made a useful tool,” said JB. Perhaps Galaxy S25 phones have the answer.

The Samsung man believes that consumer electronics will reach more and more people. And if that is the case, Samsung AI will reach a wider crowd as the company is present across categories and price segments.