Consumer Appetite for Personal AI Goes Mainstream

This article is brought to you by Qualcomm Technologies.

For many consumers, much of the promise and appeal of AI is personal. Consumers are looking past generic tools and want to know how these technologies will help them in their daily lives. These trends coincide with the advent of new classes of wearable devices that, in addition to being able to leverage powerful frontier models, feature built-in intelligence that understand the context of a user. Where are they? What are they seeing and hearing? What are their habits, their preferences, their schedules?

It’s an astonishing pivot, from passive accessories that served mostly to send users smartphone notifications to proactive, intelligent companions. The smartphone is no longer the center of that universe; though it’s still incredibly important, in this personal AI paradigm, the AI is the UI. And it shifts the focus toward you, the user.

These new technologies are exciting. But what do consumers really want?

A Personal AI report, commissioned by Qualcomm Technologies, built on a survey of more than 12,000 people across key geographies worldwide (the U.S., U.K., Germany, India, Brazil, and China) focused on the rise of personal AI in intelligent wearables looks deeply at these developments.

The smartphone is no longer the center of that universe; though it’s still incredibly important, in this personal AI paradigm, the AI is the UI.

Survey respondents are less interested in single devices and are responding more to the idea of connected ecosystems. As people expand their roster of devices, it only makes sense. Instead of relying entirely on a smartphone and a laptop, respondents also have connected technology in their cars, as well as intelligent wearables like smartwatches, smart glasses, hearables, and other wearables like rings, pins, and pendants. They want those devices to work in concert, and the way to do that is to decentralize any single one of them. Instead, the AI agent that knows the user and works across all of those devices becomes the unifying factor.

Consider a typical workday: A user’s watch detects it is time to leave for a meeting and, with permission, their AI agent factors in calendar details, real-time traffic and battery status across their devices. In the car, it suggests the best route and briefs them on their meeting agenda. As they arrive, smart glasses surface a discreet reminder, such as the meeting location or the name of a new contact, while the phone stays in their pocket. No one device has to do everything; each plays the role it is best suited for, coordinated by a personal AI agent that understands the user’s context and acts only at the user’s direction.

With this in mind, simply adding more hardware to the mix isn’t sufficient. Even though respondents will be open to new form factors, they’ll demand more from their ecosystem of devices. They’ll be sensitive to points of friction and needless complexity, and they’ll require each new device to…