[AI Leadership] ① Revolutionizing Everyday Devices Using On-Device AI

AI is rapidly becoming an integral part of daily life. Samsung Electronics’ “AI for All” vision focuses on providing users with enriching AI experiences throughout their daily lives by setting a new standard for next-generation devices with AI-powered mobile devices, TVs and home appliances.

Central to Samsung’s AI innovations is on-device AI. This technology enables AI to operate independently within the device and does not require a server or the cloud. Users benefit from quick AI response times without needing a network connection, reducing concerns over personal data leakage.

On-device AI has now evolved beyond simple functions to handle demands requiring vast amounts of data — such as generative AI — using only the device’s internal resources.

Samsung Newsroom explores how Samsung is leading the world in on-device AI innovations.

No Cloud Required: Transforming the On-Device AI Experience

Citing the need for speed and security, much of the tech industry has focused on running complex generative AI in an on-device environment. With long-term investments that date back more than a decade, Samsung has already customized AI features for many of its devices and positioned itself front and center in providing on-device AI experiences for everyday life.

Samsung’s Galaxy AI, for example, offers on-device capabilities across the company’s latest mobile devices and tablets.¹ Now supporting a total of 20 languages,² Galaxy AI enables communication without language barriers including real-time conversation interpretation as well as message and web page translation.

For TVs, Samsung leverages its expertise as a global leader in the market to train AI models. Since 2020, the company has continuously enhanced its TV-specific processor with a built-in NPU (neural processing unit). The 2024 Neo QLED 8K model’s NQ8 AI Gen3 processor features 512 neural networks for enhanced image and sound quality. By analyzing and modifying pixels, frames and sound sources, the processor delivers superior upscaling, smooth motion and clear dialogue for a seamless viewing experience in all situations.

The key to on-device AI is minimizing model size while maintaining performance. To achieve this, Samsung has focused on efficient implementation while utilizing specialized AI training data tailored to specific tasks.

▲ Sunmin Kim and Cheulhee Hahm, Master, Visual Display Business, Samsung Electronics explain on-device AI.

Smaller and Faster: Samsung’s AI Optimization Research

As AI technology advances and data processing requirements increase, model optimization has become crucial. In other words, high-performance AI models must be able to operate efficiently within the limits of the devices’ resources — including their processors, memories and batteries — while retaining performance levels and reliability for daily use. Key technologies for this include model compression, hardware optimization and data processing acceleration.

Samsung has secured various technologies in the field of model compression to reduce the size of AI models. The company has succeeded in developing light and fast AI models through techniques like quantization, which enhances response speed by simplifying algorithms and optimizing computation processes; pruning, which removes non-essential elements of a larger model; and knowledge distillation, which transfers knowledge from large models to smaller models.

Samsung also continues to innovate in hardware optimization and data processing acceleration to swiftly and efficiently run AI. For example, flash utilization technology partitions large AI models and significantly reduces memory usage. Additionally, the company has developed patented technology that is expected to assist quick inference on low-end devices without an NPU to broaden AI applications across various products. Further research is underway on increasing inference speeds with speculative decoding, a technology that predicts AI model outcomes, and enhancing computing power by running various hardware simultaneously.

▲ Pruning and knowledge distillation

End-to-End Expertise: From In-house Development to Implementation

With expertise spanning hardware, software, components and end products, Samsung is spearheading on-device AI innovation from research and development to product implementation.

From a device perspective, Samsung’s market leadership in mobile devices, TVs, home appliances and more represents its excellence in both hardware and software. Samsung integrates AI into its own devices, allowing the company to leverage both in-house development and open collaboration with industry partners to create hardware-optimized AI models.

Samsung’s expertise also includes system software to bridge hardware and application software. For example, the Tizen operating system and the NPUs on Samsung TVs power on-device AI for a smarter, more enhanced viewing experience. The company also provides developers with Vision AI and Language AI SDKs, as well as machine learning APIs to facilitate AI model training and inference.

Samsung Research, the company’s advanced research and development hub, is focused on enhancing competitiveness by utilizing specialized expertise from its global network of labs — from AI model structure development and model compression in the U.K. and U.S. to creating AI acceleration solutions in India and Poland.

From a components perspective, Samsung has endlessly driven progress in NPU performance as a leading manufacturer of semiconductors and plans to continue working with its partners to develop new ways of utilizing on-device AI.

▲ Samsung introduced a new AI TV experience at Samsung Developer Conference 2024 in October.

With its on-device AI capabilities expected to expand across more products and services, Samsung is pioneering groundbreaking changes that will see AI technologies transform daily life. In part two of this series, Samsung Newsroom will explore the company’s innovations in personalized AI.

¹ Galaxy AI-supported devices include the Galaxy Z Fold6, Flip6, Fold5, Flip5, Fold4, Flip4, S24 series, S23 series, S22 series, S24 FE, S23 FE, Tab S10 series, Tab S9 series, Tab S8 series, etc.
² Galaxy AI-supported languages include Korean, English, Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.