@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

Popular YouTuber @Mrwhosetheboss has singled out the Google Tensor G3 as a major failing of the Pixel 8 Pro. According to the YouTuber, all of the new generative AI features found on the Pixel 8 Pro cannot be processed onboard the device, but need to be off-loaded to the cloud for processing, despite Google pitching the device as being “AI-first.”
adam 49 points 3 years ago

ITT people who don't understand that generative ML models for imagery take up TB of active memory and TFLOPs of compute to process.

path: 0 4723192, hotness: undefined, score: 49, children: 6
hotdoge42 20 points 3 years ago

That's wrong. You can do it on your home PC with stable diffusion.

path: 0 4723192 4724680, hotness: undefined, score: 20, children: 4
KLISHDFSDF 20 points 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4723192 4724680 4726993, hotness: undefined, score: 20, children: 0
Kushan 11 points 3 years ago
path: 0 4723192 4724680 4726128, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 1
diomnep 1 point 3 years ago

“He’s off by multiple orders of magnitude, and he doesn’t even mention the resource that GenAI models require in large amounts (GPU), but he’s not wrong”

path: 0 4723192 4724680 4726128 4767632, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
mrbaby 1 point 3 years ago
path: 0 4723192 4724680 4736883, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
AlmightySnoo 3 points 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4723192 4726042, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
weew 45 points 3 years ago

So much for the brilliant AI-specialized Tensor processor

It's basically just a mediocre processor that offloads interesting things to the mothership.

path: 0 4720180, hotness: undefined, score: 45, children: 1
DoucheBagMcSwag 8 points 3 years ago

Yep. What a joke. Goes to show you that google could Make these pixel features available to all android devices if they wanted to.

path: 0 4720180 4724438, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0
popekingjoe 39 points 3 years ago

This really doesn't surprise me.

path: 0 4717698, hotness: undefined, score: 39, children: 0
Steeve 36 points 3 years ago

Yeah, obviously. The storage and compute required to actually run these AI generative models is absolutely massive, how would that fit in a phone?

path: 0 4722212, hotness: undefined, score: 36, children: 1
mrbaby 10 points 3 years ago

They aught to just slap a phone in a 3090

path: 0 4722212 4736932, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
Tb0n3 26 points 3 years ago

Fuuuuck that.

path: 0 4717546, hotness: undefined, score: 26, children: 11
Mojojojo1993 6 points 3 years ago

Why ?

path: 0 4717546 4718422, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 10
Ashyr 28 points 3 years ago

Because it's a privacy nightmare.

path: 0 4717546 4718422 4718495, hotness: undefined, score: 28, children: 7
canis_majoris 19 points 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4717546 4718422 4718495 4718566, hotness: undefined, score: 19, children: 5
p5f20w18k 15 points 3 years ago

Googles phones are the easiest to de-google surprisingly

path: 0 4717546 4718422 4718495 4718566 4719889, hotness: undefined, score: 15, children: 4
Mojojojo1993 1 point 3 years ago

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

path: 0 4717546 4718422 4718495 4728911, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
9point6 9 points 3 years ago

Even ignoring all the privacy issues with that, it's kinda shit to unnecessarily lose phone features when you've got no signal

path: 0 4717546 4718422 4719831, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1
Eldritch 0 points 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4717546 4718422 4719831 4724623, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 0
Mojojojo1993 17 points 3 years ago

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 ?

path: 0 4718456, hotness: undefined, score: 17, children: 20
botengang 45 points 3 years ago

Sometimes that's what people dream about. On the other hand that hybrid cloud model is giving up the last remnants of computing autonomy and control over devices we own.

path: 0 4718456 4718636, hotness: undefined, score: 45, children: 2
Uli 9 points 3 years ago

What I would like is something that gives me the framework to host my own server-side computations at home.

path: 0 4718456 4718636 4719805, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
Mojojojo1993 0 points 3 years ago

What privacy though? What would actually change ?

path: 0 4718456 4718636 4728882, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 0
soulfirethewolf 7 points 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4718456 4721063, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1
random65837 1 point 3 years ago
path: 0 4718456 4721063 4723481, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
amenotef 7 points 3 years ago

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:

  1. 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.

  2. (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.

  3. 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.

path: 0 4718456 4719992, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 5
Mojojojo1993 -1 points 3 years ago

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

path: 0 4718456 4719992 4728872, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 4
amenotef 2 points 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4718456 4719992 4728872 4729656, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 3
Mojojojo1993 2 points 3 years ago

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

path: 0 4718456 4719992 4728872 4729656 4730967, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 2
dustyData 3 points 3 years ago

Obviously, I mean, Google did so well with Stadia.

/s

path: 0 4718456 4734631, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 7
Mojojojo1993 0 points 3 years ago

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

path: 0 4718456 4734631 4735699, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 6
dustyData 2 points 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4718456 4734631 4735699 4735952, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 3
Mojojojo1993 1 point 3 years ago
path: 0 4718456 4734631 4735699 4735952 4744340, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 2
VR20X6 1 point 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4718456 4734631 4735699 4766833, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1
Mojojojo1993 1 point 3 years ago

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

path: 0 4718456 4734631 4735699 4766833 4768598, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
Contend6248 1 point 3 years ago

Good idea, while they're at it, they could tweak their prices accordingly.

path: 0 4718456 4816461, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
BlovedMadman 16 points 3 years ago

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...

path: 0 4720525, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 9
ReginaPhalange 7 points 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4720525 4720767, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 6
random65837 7 points 3 years ago
path: 0 4720525 4720767 4723266, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 5
MrPoopbutt 3 points 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4720525 4720767 4723266 4739334, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 1
pineapplelover 1 point 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4720525 4720767 4723266 4739334 4741152, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
BlovedMadman 2 points 3 years ago

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?

path: 0 4720525 4720767 4723266 4723890, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 2
random65837 2 points 3 years ago
path: 0 4720525 4720767 4723266 4723890 4723961, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 1
Onii-Chan 4 points 3 years ago

Currently using GrapheneOS on my 8 Pro, and the experience has been extremely smooth so far.

path: 0 4720525 4724307, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 1
BlovedMadman 2 points 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4720525 4724307 4726873, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0
HappyPornDaze 14 points 3 years ago
path: 0 4743714, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 0
Swarfega 9 points 3 years ago

People didn't think this was the case already?

path: 0 4760660, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1
Contend6248 1 point 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4760660 4816412, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
Sargteapot 4 points 3 years ago

And?

path: 0 4764895, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0
DoucheBagMcSwag 1 point 3 years ago
path: 0 4724403, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
Miclux -14 points 3 years ago

So no more pixel phones for me.

path: 0 4719619, hotness: undefined, score: -14, children: 10
surewhynotlem 11 points 3 years ago

How did you think it worked before this?

path: 0 4719619 4722338, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 1
random65837 9 points 3 years ago
path: 0 4719619 4722338 4723345, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
random65837 9 points 3 years ago
path: 0 4719619 4723307, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 6
Miclux 1 point 3 years ago

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? 🤡

path: 0 4719619 4723307 4729453, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 5
G020B 2 points 3 years ago

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.

path: 0 4719619 4723307 4729453 4761107, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 4
Miclux 1 point 3 years ago

It is generative ai via ml. What are you talking about... If it wasn't then it proves even more my point. Why uploading it for computing?!

path: 0 4719619 4723307 4729453 4761107 4766374, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 3
0x2d 1 point 3 years ago

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

path: 0 4719619 4761081, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
googlepixel
googlepixel

@lemmy.world

login for more options
7914
397
29

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...