AI concierge: Today, we have apps that help us do anything. The problem, if anything, is that we have too many of them, and in some cases, we are forced to switch from one to another to organise something that affects several areas. A trip, for example, is one platform for booking a seat on a plane or train, another for travel, yet another for a B&B or hotel, and so on for restaurants or museums. Sure, some portals and services aggregate, but there is often not one where you can do everything.

Is it possible that in the age of artificial intelligence, deepfakes and technology in general that can do everything, no solution cuts down on time and effort? Someone at Deutsche Telekom must have wondered. Question and answer because the German operator at MWC 2024 in Barcelona showed its solution based on generative artificial intelligence. Born out of a collaboration with Qualcomm and Brain.ai, it is an AI-based assistant that promises to replace the apps on your smartphone to be a concierge ready to turn voice requests into concrete acts.

“Book me a flight”, one will say; the assistant listens, processes and takes care of the rest. This is thanks to Deutsche Telekom’s Brain. AI-based generative AI interface promises to perform everyday tasks that normally require switching between different smartphone applications. For those who prefer it, just voice commands or text commands, and the concierge executes them. It’s a bit of the principle that prompted the creators of Rabbit to create the anti-smartphone R1, presented at CES 2024 in Las Vegas.

From Natural AI to the brain

Brain is an AI and interface company founded in 2015. Brain’s AI organises the world’s software, making it human-centric and natural. The company invents new technologies, design metaphors and developer platforms that allow computers to become an extension of our minds. In 2016, Brain pioneered one-shot learning NLP in the industry, which has become a fundamental technology in many widely used language models today. Building on this innovation, Brain invented the world’s first consumer generative interface, Natural AI, in 2020. In 2024, Brain.ai will unveil a revolutionary app-less smartphone at Mobile World Congress with one of the world’s leading mobile network operators.

The next step: an AI on the device

According to Jon Abrahamson, Chief Product & Digital Officer at Deutsche Telekom: ‘Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models (LLM) will soon be an integral part of mobile devices. We will use them to improve and simplify our customers’ lives. Our vision is of a magenta concierge for a smartphone without apps. A true daily companion that fulfils needs and simplifies the digital life’.

For the presentation at MWC 2024, real-life use cases were shown with Deutsche Telekom’s T Phone, an operator-branded smartphone already available on the German market that does not have particularly powerful or refined hardware, proving that thanks to cloud-based AI operations, advanced functions can be had even on inexpensive products. Speaking of smartphones and generative AI in the cloud, Deutsche Telekom also brought a new model to the Catalan show, one based on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform. A top-of-the-range model that will allow AI on-device processing, with advantages in terms of speed, energy efficiency and the certainty that information and data remain on the device.