Samsung's emphasis on personal AI in the Galaxy S25 gives it an intriguing allure, yet its invasive nature makes it unsettling

Samsung's latest Galaxy Unpacked event showcased a focus on AI technology, with the escalation of Samsung's AI suite, Galaxy AI, towards personal assistant capabilities. This move is intended to reset the balance in the phone experience, bringing smarter, more adept voice assistants closer to the action.

One of the key announcements was the introduction of a new feature called Now Brief. This AI-produced summary provides users with an overview of their day, going beyond typical AI summaries by taking context into account and suggesting navigation, food recommendations, and recaps of events.

Now Brief is more all-encompassing than its counterparts, as it aims to act as an assistant that anticipates user needs without being explicitly asked. To function effectively, it requires a significant amount of user data. However, Samsung's new AI vision involves an on-device AI for increased security, ensuring that user data never goes to the cloud for processing.

The progress of Galaxy AI comes with challenges regarding privacy and customer satisfaction. Achieving Samsung's vision of a connected, all-knowing AI assistant is not without its complications. Nonetheless, reducing the number of taps required to perform tasks on a phone could be a practical advantage of a more personal AI.

The deep integration with Google's Gemini is one example of an AI feature that may still require cloud processing. Some of Samsung's new AI features may still reach the cloud, but the focus remains on providing a more personalised and secure experience for users.

Samsung's AI technology has been in existence for a year, and the latest developments are part of the company's strategy to make phones more exciting again after years of stagnation. Phones have reached a plateau in terms of design, and the UI has been a source of frustration for many users. By focusing on AI, Samsung aims to revitalise the phone experience and offer innovative solutions to common user frustrations.

In the future, Samsung may add a personalised assistant function to the Now Brief feature to further improve the Galaxy AI assistant capabilities. This would bring Samsung's AI technology one step closer to achieving its vision of a connected, all-knowing AI assistant that enhances the user experience and revolutionises the phone industry.

Samsung's emphasis on personal AI in the Galaxy S25 gives it an intriguing allure, yet its invasive nature makes it unsettling