Android AICore lets you “run generative AI features directly on your Android phone or tablet’s hardware.” These models (Gemini Nano) are inherently large, but Google now has a more detailed explanation of why Android AICore storage occasionally spikes.
AICore is available on Android 14 and higher for supported devices (processors). Google provides a list of which features and apps use the local model:
- Advanced proofreading: It enhances grammar correction and language understanding as you type.
- Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR): It converts streamed audio and audio files into text transcripts.
- Scam detection: It identifies messages that can be considered spam or scams.
- Smart reply: It provides high-quality, context-aware response suggestions in messaging apps. For example, it works in WhatsApp, Line, and KakaoTalk through Gboard.
- Summarization: It automatically creates concise summaries of recorded audio. For example, it works in the Recorder app.
- Translation: It easily translates text from one language to another.
More broadly, on-device AI is credited as allowing for enhanced privacy, offline functionality, and faster and more consistent performance:
- “Sensitive information remains on your device. It’s never sent to the cloud or to Google.”
- “AI-powered features work even when you have no network connection or are in Airplane mode. This includes text summarization and smart replies.”
- “Local processing removes the lag associated with cloud-based services providing a faster and more reliable experience.”
A Google support article now explains “Why storage use increases.” When a new version of Gemini Nano is available, AICore “temporarily keeps both the old and new versions of the model for up to 3 days.”
This is intended as a “fail-safe [that] allows your phone to instantly revert to an older version if the new update encounters an error, rather than having to download gigabytes of data again.”
When the system confirms the update is stable, the extra storage space clears automatically.
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