Unveiling Android System Intelligence: Insights and applications

AI or artificial intelligence is everywhere and working continuously in the background optimising our lives without us even being aware of it. Case in point, Android System Intelligence – a small AI service that runs in the background of almost all Android phones available today – that works quietly and tirelessly in the background to optimise your Android experience. 

The service, first introduced in Android 12 in 2021 as part of the Private Compute Core suite, now runs by default on all Google devices with Google Play Store. But what does it do, exactly?

What is Android System Intelligence (ASI)?

ASI is part of the Private Compute Core feature-set and runs in the background on our phones. It tracks and learns our habits and seamlessly customises our Android experience to make it more personal and useful to us. This includes powering features such as Live Caption and Now Playing. Since it’s part of the Private Compute Core, Google insists that the data collected is kept private. 

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The Private Compute Core was designed to keep our data as private as possible, even hiding the data within that core from the OS, and other apps and services that are running. Do note that if you’re concerned about privacy, you can restrict ASI’s access to your data, and even disable it completely from within Settings. You can also delete all the data gathered to date by heading to Settings > Privacy > Android System Intelligence > Clear Data.

What does ASI do?

ASI enables several important functions within Android, so we’d recommend leaving it enabled. These features include the following:

1. Live captions and Live translate:

Auto captioning any media, and then translating those captions and even text in real-time are both enabled by ASI, which also tracks your default language.

2. Screen attention and smart auto-rotate:

These features both work by tracking whether you’re looking at the screen or not, where the latter also looks at screen rotation in relation to your posture and face. Keeping these features under ASI’s purview helps keep the information private and reduces how much behavioural data third-party apps can access.

3. Copy and paste improvements:

ASI more intelligently copies and pastes data between apps, ensuring that your clipboard isn’t accessed without authorisation.

4. Suggested apps and smart notifications:

App suggestions you see in the launcher are powered by ASI, as are smart notifications that are more personalised and/or add action buttons to make it easier to respond to them. This also applies to app search.

5. Smart text selection:

Long-pressing on an address to ask for directions directly, or detecting links, and other similar features are handled by ASI.

6. Now Playing:

ASI listens to the music around you and can automatically recognise it.

7. Smart boarding pass:

Google Pay can automatically detect a scanned boarding pass.

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On top of this, ASI boasts of other features that help manage security and privacy better.

Clearly, ASI is an important and essential component of the modern Android smartphone, powering a lot more of Android than we would at first expect. Again, as part of the Private Compute Core, ASI is designed from the ground up to be private and secure, so you can rest assured that your data is secure for now.