Your Phone's Virtual Assistant Is About to Change in a Big Way

For as "smart" as our phones are supposed to be, they're not very good at getting things done on our behalf. But that's about to change, according to Qualcomm.

During its annual Snapdragon Summit, the mobile chipmaker showcased how its new Snapdragon 8 Elite processor will be able to power more advanced virtual assistants that can use your device's camera to "see" the world around you. 

Qualcomm isn't the first to have this idea; the demonstration aligned with Google's Project Astra concept shown earlier this year and OpenAI's multimodal ChatGPT. Qualcomm's presentation was just yet another indication that virtual assistants are evolving into much more than the command-centric versions of Alexa, Siri and the Google Assistant that we've been using for the last decade. And that's a big deal, because today's digital helpers are used for little more than checking the weather, setting timers and managing smart home appliances. 

But it all depends on whether device makers implement such functionality; Qualcomm's demo was just meant to show that its chip is capable of supporting it. Still, it's notable because Qualcomm's silicon powers phones from some of the biggest Android phone makers, including Samsung, OnePlus and Motorola, meaning the chip's new capabilities could provide a peek at the new features we see on Android phones in 2025 and beyond.

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If the vision outlined in Qualcomm's keynote comes to fruition, virtual assistants are about to get a major upgrade. The company envisions a future in which you'll be able to point your phone's camera at a restaurant bill and simply ask the virtual helper to divide the tab three ways and add a 20% tip. To take things even further, the demo showed how the virtual assistant would then be able to communicate with a personal finance app to track your spending.

Unsurprisingly, Qualcomm also sees this capability extending beyond just phones. In the same demo video, a woman wearing a pair of smart glasses asked a question about the flowers in the Hawaiin lei her colleague was wearing. 

It's an ambition Qualcomm shares with companies like Google, OpenAI and Apple, all of which are developing technologies that can leverage the cameras in our gadgets to help us get things done more efficiently. 

Take Google's Project Astra as an example. During the company's I/O developer conference in May, it showcased how a prototype version of the assistant would be able to identify objects in a user's surroundings and answer questions about them in real time.

Google demonstrated Astra on a phone, and also on camera-enabled glasses.

Then there's OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has gotten better at interpreting both speech and images to do things like help users solve math problems almost instantly. 

Apple's Siri is also getting a big upgrade that will enable the digital helper to draw on your personal context to answer questions and take action within apps. That should make it so that you can just ask Siri for a recipe that a friend sent you, even if you can't remember whether it was shared via text or email, and then send an email just by asking verbally. 

Apple is also launching a new feature called visual intelligence that will let you use the iPhone's camera to scan the world around you and take certain actions -- such as making a reservation at a restaurant you just walked by -- with a push of the iPhone 16's Camera Control button.

All of these examples would represent a big step forward for virtual assistants. While today's voice-enabled helpers can automate tasks, manage home devices and answer questions, they can't accomplish complex tasks for us.

Apple's visual intelligence feature as shown in a demo video during its September event. 

Tech giants clearly see a world in which that will change in the near future. But the question is when -- and whether these technologies will live up to their promises. Google's Project Astra tech has yet to arrive, although Sissie Hsiao, Google's vice president and general manager of Gemini experiences, said it would eventually be baked into Gemini. Apple also has yet to release those aforementioned Siri upgrades, which are part of its Apple Intelligence push to infuse the iPhone with more AI smarts. 

And Qualcomm's tech all depends on how phone makers adopt it, although it's worth noting that some features shown during last year's Snapdragon Summit -- like the ability to erase objects in photos and fill in the background to expand an image -- did arrive in 2024 phones like the Galaxy S24 series. 

There's undoubtedly an emphasis on voice assistants right now, but that doesn't mean we're ready for a voice-first world yet. New gadgets that rely primarily on voice interactions, like the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin, were panned by critics at launch for not living up to expectations (although both devices have been updated significantly since then). Regardless, it's also a testament to the notion that the smartphone already works well as it is, and there may not be a need to fix what isn't broken.

But if one thing's for sure, it's that voice assistants are surely going to change -- and fast.