LG today announced that it will be unveiling a “suite of AI technologies” for its smartphones at MWC 2018 later this month. These new features will be a part of the company’s 2018 V30 smartphone and focus on camera and voice recognition.

The 2018 LG V30 will come with Vision AI that will automatically analyze objects and the scene and recommend an appropriate shooting mode. LG says that shooting a photo of a plate of pasta will result in the camera switching to food mode under which colors are slightly warmer and there’s increased sharpening. LG analyzed over 100 million images in order to develop the image recognition algorithms.

There’s also a new low-light shooting mode that will automatically brighten a scene by almost two times thanks to Vision AI. Then similar to other smartphones, you will also be able to point the V30’s camera at QR codes and other objects to start an image search or buy them from Amazon.

LG has also developed Voice AI that will allow users to control system apps using their voice. The company has worked closely with Google to add support for these voice commands directly into Google Assistant. These 32 voice commands are exclusive to LG’s Voice AI and allow one to directly jump into a specific part of an app.

                                                                  VOICE COMMAND
                                               FEATURE                                    (PRECEDE WITH “OK GOOGLE”)
1                                     Wide-angle photo                                Take a picture on a wide angle
2                                     Wide-angle selfie                                 Take a selfie on a wide angle
3                                     Wide-angle video                               Record a video on a wide angle
4                                Wide-angle selfie video                       Take a selfie video on a wide angle
5                                          Cine Video                                        Open camera on Cine Video
6                                   Expert Photo Mode                              Open camera on a manual mode
7                                   Expert Video Mode                              Open camera on a manual video
8                                Cine Video (Romantic)                              Take a romantic Cine Video
9                             Cine Video (Melodramatic)                     Take a melodramatic Cine Video
10                                 Cine Video (Thriller)                                 Take a thriller Cine Video
11                                Cine Video (Beauty)                                   Take a beauty Cine Video
12                            Cine Video (Blockbuster)                  Take a summer blockbuster Cine Video
13                       Cine Video (Romantic Comedy)              Take a romantic comedy Cine Video
14                           Cine Video (Documentary)                        Take a documentary Cine Video
15                              Cine Video (Landscape)                              Take a scenery Cine Video
16                                  Cine Video (Drama)                                 Take a drama Cine Video
17                               Cine Video (Historic)                                Take a historical Cine Video
18                               Cine Video (Mystery)                                  Take a mystery Cine Video
19                                  Cine Video (Noir)                                         Take a noir Cine Video
20                                Cine Video (Classic)                                    Take a classic Cine Video
21                              Cine Video (Flashback)                              Take a flashback Cine Video
22                                Cine Video (Pop Art)                                   Take a pop art Cine Video
23                              Expert Mode (Graphy)                                Open camera with Graphy

24                                  Panoramic Photo                                                        Pending
25                                      Food Photo                                                              Pending
26                           Time-lapse Photo (Video)                                                Pending
27                                Slow-motion Video                                                      Pending
28                                  Low-light Photo                                                         Pending
29                                    AI Cam Photo                                                           Pending
30                                     Image Search                                                           Pending
31                                QR Code Scanning                                                       Pending
32                                  Shopping Search                                                        Pending

LG says that going forward, it will focus on AI for its smartphones to refine their existing features and even add new ones. It also says that it plans on bringing some of its new AI features to older devices through a software update.

Our Take

If you did not already guess it, LG is not going to unveil a new flagship smartphone at MWC 2018. Instead, the company will be launching a new variant of the LG V30 with new AI features. The company wants to expand the lifespan of its devices by adding new features to them, but none of the AI features unveiled by LG today are particularly enticing from a consumer’s viewpoint.