By David Pierce , editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall

Nothing’s next phone will be all about AI

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2024-06-06 20:00:08

By David Pierce , editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.

Nothing CEO Carl Pei just published a video in which he makes two big claims: that smartphones are in fact the AI gadget of the future and that AI might change the way we use those phones. “People love their phones!” Pei says in the video. But “the user experience hasn’t really changed for a really long time.” Everything’s faster, prettier, and easier, he says, “but the fundamental experience hasn’t changed.” Pei now thinks that’s about to change.

I should note that Pei does casually mention the existence of the Phone 3, which has been rumored for a while and, if Nothing keeps to its typical July launch schedule, could be on shelves soon. According to Pei, the Phone 3 will also be the company’s first true AI phone.

In the video, the Nothing team shows off a couple of demos. One looks like a straight rip of OpenAI’s GPT-4o demo: a personalized voice assistant baked into the operating system. That is what everyone thinks the future of smartphone looks like. The other demo shows a personalized, dynamic homescreen that looks like a combination of app launcher and news feed. It automatically grabs and shows a QR code for a ticket you’ll need soon, pulls content from the web, and shows relevant reminders and weather. The idea, Pei says, is to think about how AI can move smartphones past their app-centric model and into a system that just knows what you need and where it is at all times.