@MrWhosetheboss video reveals Google's Pixel 8 Pro Tensor G3 off-loads all generative AI tasks to the cloud
3 years ago by Vangarell to c/googlepixel
And a lot of those require models that are multiple Gigabytes in size that then need to be loaded into memory and are processed on a high end video card that would generate enough heat to ruin your phones battery if they could somehow shrink it to fit inside a phone. This just isn't feasible on phones yet. Is it technically possible today? Yes, absolutely. Are the tradeoffs worth it? Not for the average person.
You can for example run some upscaling models on your phone just fine (I mentioned the SuperImage app in the photography tips megathread). Yes the most powerful and memory-hungry models will need more RAM than what your phone can offer but it's a bit misleading if Google doesn't say that those are being run on the cloud.
Yep. What a joke. Goes to show you that google could Make these pixel features available to all android devices if they wanted to.
This really doesn't surprise me.
Why ?
Using Google products has always been a "privacy nightmare" - it's not like this is some mega open source phone or anything it's literally Google's flagship. Is this really surprising? Playing with fire gets you burned.
In what way ? Everything you do on phone Google has access to and therefore any govt body as well.
Privacy on a phone is a myth unless you use a modded phone
That's how phones have always worked. As long as they are not automatically ingesting data from people without permission. I don't see an issue with this. At least in this instance we have some choice in what we send or don't. It's no more privacy nightmare than mid-Journey doll-e or any of the others.
Isn't that kinda the dream. We have devices that remote the os. So we get a super powerful device that keeps getting updated and upgraded. We just need a receiver ?
Isn't that what we want. Can reduce down the bulk on devices. Just a slab with battery, screen and modem and soc that can power the remote application ?
What privacy though? What would actually change ?
That would be, if Google wasn't constantly killing things that didn't do good enough. Especially given how expensive generative AI can be to run remotely. Just look at what happened with Stadia
Also, it just feels disappointing. Ever since chatGPT, they've been pouring near infinite budget into stuff like this by hiring the top talent, and working them to the latest hours of the night. And the best that they could come up with for the pixel 8 is feeding it data from the cloud.
And I can't even really believe the whole "consumer hardware isn't powerful enough" thing given that there's quite a few ARM processors, Apple especially, That's been able to build consumer hardware capable of performing generative AI (I've personally been able to run stable, diffusion and whisper on my M1 MacBook). Maybe not at the scale or quality of the cloud, but still capable of doing so regardless.
I mean it sucks for offline situations or for actions that need very good latency.
But the phone's battery would be happier if the processing is not done locally.
For some things I prefer to do the stuff locally, for other things on the cloud.
Some cloud Vs local examples I'm thinking about:
For example (example not related to the Pixel) if I'm generating an image with stable diffusion at home I prefer to use my RX 6800 on my private local Linux rather than a cloud computer with a subscription. But if I had to do the same on a mobile phone with tiny processing power and battery capacity I'd prefer to do it on the cloud.
(Another non AI example): for gaming, I prefer to run things natively. At least until it is possible to stream a game without added latency. Obviously I don't play games on a phone.
Another example (Google photos): I would prefer to connect Google photos to a local NAS server at home, and "own the storage on premise" and then pay a lower fee to Google photos for the extra services it brings. Browsing, face and objects recognition, etc. But this is not an option. With this I would be able invest on my own storage, even if I had dozens of gigabytes in 4K60FPS videos.
Funny you should say that. I'm basing this on GeForce which I use exclusively. It runs games from the cloud. I play Valhalla on my TV. I love rural and don't have don't have fibre.
Yes you read that. No fibre.
I recently got starlink and have been loving life. Living on a farm playing GeForce games. I loved stadia and bought into the whole thing. Raged that they cancelled it. But I got my money's worth.
Now it's not perfect but I live in rural NZ. So I have streaming to Aus to use GeForce since GeForce isn't native to NZ.
It's insane how good this cloud gaming is.
So fuck Google but first company to get a phone running on remote I will be buying
I mean I didn't mean it to be funny...so apologies if you took it as a bad joke.
But basically I just meant that I prefer (for gaming) to run the game locally than on a cloud. I barely tried remote gaming. I tried on WLAN the one from steam but only for 5 minutes. Then I tried PS Remote play last week streaming FF16 (just for testing) to my steam deck running W11 but at the home I was there was not enough bandwidth because there was a delay while moving the camera.
I usually play at 144Hz 1440p (on PC) and also at 2160p 60Hz (TV, although the PS5 gives crappy 30 FPS in many heavy games).
I also play some online games like Warzone with some friends. So if the experience of cloud gaming works for games like these then of course I'd be more happy with it.
Yeah nah. You ain't getting anything like this. Nobody who plays that kinda high level would be Happy with cloud. I'm trying to live on the cheap and since I'm nomad with no house or fixed abode.
Yoid not get that can off power from GeForce. You can't really play any competition games as latency would be too high.
I suggest everyone gives it a go as it's been great for me. But we need more people involved and more competition. If it's just GeForce then they can price it through the roof with no improvements
Stadia was great. People were just attacking it. Bad marketing from the get go. Have you tried it ? Did you just follow what everyone else says or actually try things for yourself
No, how could I try it? it doesn't exist anymore. Poor tiny little startup Google, bullied by the big bad user mob who paid for the service they sold and actually expected to receive what they had bought.
I tried it. It worked reasonably well when wired and pretty terribly wireless, which isn't that surprising. The free starter kits they gave out came with a Chromecast Ultra for a reason: it had Ethernet on the power brick.
On the other hand, I hated it ideologically from the start. You bought games that were only available on their service and could only play with an active Internet connection. That's also to be expected. Not ideal, but not a big deal in itself so long as you know what you're getting into. What isn't okay is that you could lose access to the service permanently and there was no guarantee you would be compensated in any way whatsoever. At most they gave vague "don't worry about it wink wink" answers when asked in Reddit AMAs. Fortunately they did refund everyone when they shut it down, but they were under no legal obligation to do so. People who bought in were lucky. I wish I could say it was purely out of goodwill, but it's more likely that a bean counter at Google decided it was cheaper to refund everyone than to shoulder the bad press from not doing so.
Thank goodness there were also no notable exclusives on the service. The idea of games just completely disappearing from history just because Google got bored with a product like they always do is nauseating. It's bad enough that they bought out Typhoon Studios only to pretty much immediately shut them down. Again, thank goodness they were able to rise from the ashes and reform the studio under a new name.
Interesting. I only had access to it wireless. I used a OnePlus one VPN to North America and HDMI to a screen. It wasn't flawless but I didn't expect it to be.
Oh I agree but also I don't. Ubisoft games are still the same. They can drop access at any point and they likely wouldn't refund. Unfortunately unless we build an open source internet that is backward compatible I think we are fucked.
Will Xbox and PS5 games work without a patch. Could they yank a game and stop it being playable? Can steam epic gog ?
Yeah there was a game that was exclusive? Was that the one you mentioned?
Fuck Google but I loved the idea and now use GeForce. Similar concept I suppose
Good idea, while they're at it, they could tweak their prices accordingly.
This just strengthens the argument to install privacy/security first operating systems like CalyxOS and GrapheneOS. I don't was a phone that's more a service subscription than it is hardware. I have the pixel 8 and didn't get the pro due to the offloading to Google servers for some "features".
Just waiting for GrapheneOS to be released for the 8... Until then, I'm sitting uncomfortable knowing my phone is uploading telemetry to Google servers...
I've bitten the bullet, replaced my Redmi 13 to a Pixel 7 + GrapheneOS - because the MIUI spyware and google spyware are just too much... I still don't get why , as an owner of a phone , I'm not the owner of the phone.
I can't put grapheneOS on my p7 since at&t sells phones with locked bootloaders. I didn't know this when I bought it or I wouldn't have bought it.
Oh yeah, only unlocked phones can boot custom os, carrier locked are not. Unfortunate you had to find out the hard way. I could've sworn it was on graphene's website or something.
Well, yes, however, installing GrapheneOS may mean not having access to "features" which were part of the marketing for the phone... Which begs the question around what are you paying for? To me, it's like you are paying for a product and also for services. Although the p8 and p8p both have 7 years of support, I wonder if that extends to features and services that are cloud based?
Yea I was tempted for a second to get it, but there was a comment that it "should" be possible to upgrade to the released version when available, I don't want to have to mess around in the event that it's not. So I'm just going to wait a week or so.
When some company praises the ground braking AI capability of a new SoC they have been built, you might get the idea that it's doing these tasks on said SoC.
Why would you think otherwise?
A list of what this phone does offline and what not would be great.
How did you think it worked before this?
I think you have no clue what the g3 is capable of. Magic eraser for example can be used entirely on device. THAT'S what even Google admits.
So now tell me why it needs to upload the pictures...just for computing? 🤡
Well, the Magic Eraser is just an algorithmic fill. It's not an actual generative ai. So it doesn't require so much compute power. If Pixel 8 had the new generative Magic Eraser on device, it would be either really bad or take minutes to process.
Pixels have never been "stock android" instead they have been close to stock but with extra AI features over it (e.g Magic Eraser, Now Playing, etc)
Surprisingly they're the easiest phones to degoogle as well
@lemmy.world

The World's Google Pixel community!
This community is for lemmings to gather and discuss all things related to the Google Pixel phone and other related hardware. Feel free to ask questions, seek advice, and engage in discussions around the Pixel and its ecosystem.
We ask you to be polite when addressing others and respect Lemmy.world's rules.
NSFW content is not allowed and will immediately get you banned.
It also goes without saying that self-promotion of any nature and referral links are not allowed. When in doubt, contact the mod team first.
Also, please, no politics.
For more general Android discussions, see !android@lemmy.world.
This community is not in any way affiliated with Google. If you are looking for customer support regarding your Pixel phone, look here instead: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/
go to feed...
@lemmy.world

The World's Google Pixel community!
This community is for lemmings to gather and discuss all things related to the Google Pixel phone and other related hardware. Feel free to ask questions, seek advice, and engage in discussions around the Pixel and its ecosystem.
We ask you to be polite when addressing others and respect Lemmy.world's rules.
NSFW content is not allowed and will immediately get you banned.
It also goes without saying that self-promotion of any nature and referral links are not allowed. When in doubt, contact the mod team first.
Also, please, no politics.
For more general Android discussions, see !android@lemmy.world.
This community is not in any way affiliated with Google. If you are looking for customer support regarding your Pixel phone, look here instead: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/
go to feed...
ITT people who don't understand that generative ML models for imagery take up TB of active memory and TFLOPs of compute to process.
save