Asia Tech Wire (June 26) -- George Zhao, CEO of Chinese smartphone maker Honor, said that both Apple and Huawei have followed the company's AI route.

Zhao made the remarks in a media interview during the MWC Shanghai 2024.

Regarding the integration of large models with cell phones, he said that many people can do it if they just port the models from the cloud to cell phones, but the power consumption is very high.

Zhao mentioned that the recent releases of Apple iOS and Huawei HarmonyOS, presenting a direction in AI that is basically the same as that of Honor, "Both have gone down the path of Honor, and all manufacturers will definitely follow this path."

He pointed out that cloud-side AI is all directly ported and cannot utilize the capabilities of device-side AI.

"It's good to have strong rivals in the competition, and the three-year window of time to take the lead is something we didn't even dream of, something we would wake up laughing about," Zhao said. "But Apple's influence is very strong and we've been talking about it for three years."

Honor on Wednesday showed off two major device-side AI innovations for the first time, one of which combines device-side AI with the screen to help users soothe their eyes.

And the other automatically recognizes synthetic faces in scenarios where the user is using the phone and pops up anti-fraud alerts.