Your phone knows what you’re thinking! Honor launches MagicOS 8.0 – world’s first intent-based UI،
The smartphones in our pockets can do a lot of things, but wouldn't it be great if they took a little initiative and started helping us without having to tell them? This may sound like science fiction, but Honor thinks otherwise. The company has just launched its next-generation mobile software called Magic OS 8.0 in China, and it incorporates intelligent AI magic. Honor even calls it “the world’s first intent-based user interface (IUI).” But what does that mean?
What is Intent-Based UI?
First of all, the beating heart of this software system is an AI hardware chip (although Honor won't divulge any details about it), and with its help, Magic OS 8.0 can do crazy things. Oh, and by the way, Honor also launched its MagicLM, which is a large language model not unlike the infamous ChatGPT. So what are these new magical things we're talking about?
Magic Portal – your phone now knows what you need
This is the part where your phone takes the initiative. In the press release, Honor talks about human-device interactions and how cumbersome they are, using text and touch interfaces. Well, no more. Honor claims that “instead of acting on request, MagicOS 8.0 renders services based on user intentions.” It sounds a bit like the science fiction film Minority Report. This is based on platform-level AI. MagicOS 8.0 can “interpreting language, images, gestures and eye movements to understand a user’s intent and proactively offer services.”
Let's say you're looking at a review of the Honor Magic5 Pro. The IUI will automatically take you to a page where you can purchase the phone. Or if the phone hears you say something like “Gosh, I need a new case for this phone,” it will suggest a number of cases for your specific phone.
“Let's Go to Tiffany's” will launch Baidu Map (the software debuts with support for more than 100 apps in China) and set a navigation to the nearest jewelry store. In China, this will be integrated with MagicRing, meaning the AI will be available across different devices including cars, smart speakers, and more.
MagicLM – your AI can understand you
After the shock created by ChatGPT with its quite astonishing abilities to understand human language and perform different tasks, all the major tech companies in the world went back to the proverbial drawing boards. This has resulted in many AI language models, from Google's own Bard to countless other smaller, not-so-popular AI entities.
MagicLM is Honor's version, which works at the platform level, and it is optimized and developed in collaboration with Qualcomm. It uses all the benefits of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and has seven billion settings (whatever that means).
You get the usual AI magic; this language model can understand natural language, which means you can talk to it like you're talking to a human, and it can also convert text to speech and vice versa, analyze data, answer questions, you know , the usual AI stuff. Honor boasts that using this language model, you can find a specific image in videos simply by saying out loud what you're looking for. It sounds amazing, but we need to test it.
My phone is listening to me. I'm feeling a little paranoid now
We live in an age where people are constantly worried about their digital security. Honor claims that because MagicOS 8.0 uses platform-based AI, all data remains on the device and is backed up there, behind a secure virtual space called Parallel Space.
We are very excited about this new user interface and can't wait to test it out in person. It has the potential to transform the way we interact with our phones or become a huge pain in the arm. We wouldn't be surprised if other major manufacturers follow suit or launch their AI-based generative interfaces this year, so stay tuned for that. The word of the year will most certainly be AI.
