Due to US trade restrictions, Huawei is losing access to Google’s services. The new Mate 30 smartphones announced in Munich today will launch with the open-source Android, but it will not feature the Play Store, Gmail, YouTube, Google Pay, or the many other services which Western consumers are used to.

Among the features that will be missing from the Mate 30 onwards is Google Assistant. Huawei is quickly working to fill the gaps left without access to Google’s services with its own and is launching the Huawei Assistant as a replacement for Mountain View’s virtual assistant.

Walter Ji, Director of Business, HUAWEI Consumer Business Group Western Europe, said:

“With our focus on user experience, we bring AI into mobile services so we can proactively identify user needs and thus improve their smartphone experience.

Huawei Assistant is a product that intelligently fulfils user needs at the same time as offering partners an opportunity to provide their services to users through a globally-available distribution platform.”

Huawei Assistant will launch with basic functionality compared to Google’s version, but the company is promising to expand it.

By swiping to the right of the homescreen, much like accessing Google Assistant today, users can begin interacting with Huawei Assistant. The service is powered by Huawei Ability Gallery, a service distribution platform.

There are four key features of the Huawei Assistant:

• Newsfeed – Today’s Google Assistant provides some personalised articles when you swipe to it on an Android device. The newsfeed feature is Huawei Assistant’s alternative but users can decide whether to receive custom recommendations or to select from news agencies to fill their feed with “up-to-the-minute” articles.
• Search – Users can search for information on their smartphone using Huawei Assistant. The assistant will surface things such as installed apps, memos, emails, and calendar entries, while also providing an online search feature using the default browser.
• Instant Access – Four shortcuts to a user’s choice of applications can be selected for quick access. In the future, Huawei says this can make use of AI so the shortcuts are intelligently-selected based on what the user may want at that moment.
• SmarterCare – Real-time information will be provided using AI. At launch, this will mean things such as the weather forecast, missed calls, and schedule reminders. Future planned functionality will enable more powerful abilities like booking restaurants, flights, taxis, and hotels.

The new assistant from Huawei will be pre-installed on Mate 30 series devices but it will also be downloadable from the company’s App Gallery.

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“The Kirin 990 has been fully upgraded in terms of performance and power efficiency, AI computing, and ISP, extending mobile phone experiences to a new level,” says Yu.

Huawei’s new SoC is the first to pack a dual-core NPU built on the Da Vinci architecture, which comprises of large NPU cores and “tiny” NPU cores. The idea is that the large cores provide high performance and power efficiency in heavy computing scenarios, while the tiny cores are used for low power consumption applications.

This is how the Kirin 990 compares in terms of performance and efficiency to other leading chips:

“We are providing not only the best, most powerful AI processing performance, but also bringing the best energy efficiency,” says Yu.

A brand-new ISP (Image Signal Processor) also features in the Kirin 990 which pioneers block-matching and 3D filtering for professional-level hardware noise reduction (NR). The new ISP is also the first to enable dual-domain video NR.

If you’re wondering why we’re covering a new ISP, it’s for this very reason:

Yes, that’s a person’s heart rate and respiration being measured by a camera thanks to AI combined with Huawei’s new ISP. The future societal ramifications of such technology are sure to generate debate – for example, it’s easy to imagine people being singled out at security checkpoints if a heart rate spike is detected – but, for now, it shows Huawei’s technological leadership.

Huawei also demonstrated how the Kirin 990 supports real-time multi-instance segmentation. In layman’s terms, it enables the real-time selection and modification of certain parts of a video. This could mean increasing the size of objects or people, creating layers, or completely replacing the background, all without the need for a green screen.

You can see the multi-instance segmentation in the demo below:

Huawei feels like it’s on a mission to show how important it is to the global technology landscape amid finding itself in the crossfire in the US-China trade war and facing claims it poses a national security threat.

Ahead of Yu’s keynote, the music video for ‘Radio’ by German rock legends Rammstein was played. The song is a political statement about fake news, which Huawei feels it’s been repeatedly subjected to. Huawei even has a Twitter account called @HuaweiFacts which aims to counter it.

Huawei keeps black swans, which once gave Europeans a shock when they first arrived, in the middle of a lake at its research campus. To their researchers, it’s intended to be a constant reminder to consider the unexpected and prepare for it.

We’ll leave security matters to the experts, but there’s little denying Huawei’s innovation and impact on the market in all the areas it operates. AI, in particular, is an area where Huawei has really excelled.

Huawei was keen to highlight where it had already achieved two world firsts in mobile AI with the Kirin 970 and 980:

Qualcomm is arguably Huawei’s closest Western counterpart, but it has lagged behind its Chinese rival in areas like AI.

In one slide, Huawei highlighted the performance of the Kirin 990 across ten key areas when compared with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855+X50:

It’s all good showing impressive numbers and graphs, but Yu says he’s often asked how AI is actually being used. Yu says Huawei’s AI-API has been accessed over 1.6 trillion times across categories including photography, travel, shopping, health, education, creation, and art.

The Kirin 990 will launch alongside the Huawei Mate 30 during an event in Munich on the 19th September 2019. We’ll be putting it to the test as soon as possible.

Disclaimer: Our travel and accommodation expenses for the keynote were covered by Huawei, but our reporting is entirely independent.

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The Huawei Ascend 910 is the “world’s most powerful AI processor,” according to a press release on Friday. The chip’s specs were first announced during last year’s Huawei Connect event in Shanghai.

Eric Xu, Rotating Chairman of Huawei, said:

“We have been making steady progress since we announced our AI strategy in October last year. Everything is moving forward according to plan, from R&D to product launch.

We promised a full-stack, all-scenario AI portfolio and today we delivered, with the release of Ascend 910 and MindSpore. This also marks a new stage in Huawei’s AI strategy.”

Huawei claims the final version of the Ascend 910 not only performs as promised, but it does so with much lower power consumption.

For half-precision floating point (FP16) operations, Ascend 910 delivers 256 TeraFLOPS performance. For integer precision calculations (INT8), it delivers 512 TeraOPS.

Huawei initially expected the Ascend 910’s max power consumption to be 350W but the company has managed to deliver the promised performance with a max consumption of just 310W.

“Ascend 910 performs much better than we expected,” said Xu. “Without a doubt, it has more computing power than any other AI processor in the world.”

Alongside the Ascend 910, Huawei has launched an AI computing framework called MindSpore.

Last year, Huawei announced three goals for MindSpore:

• Easy development: Reduce training time and costs.
• Efficient execution: Use the least amount of resources with the highest possible OPS/W.
• Adaptable to all scenarios: Including device, edge, and cloud applications.

Huawei claims that MindSpore requires 20 percent fewer lines of code than other leading frameworks when used for a typical neural network for natural language processing.

“MindSpore will go open source in the first quarter of 2020,” said Xu. “We want to drive broader AI adoption and help developers do what they do best.”

The Chinese tech behemoth continues to expand its presence despite battling a US trade ban. The US has been pressuring its allies to ban Huawei over concerns it poses a national security threat.

While security must always be prioritised, few can dispute the innovation which Huawei brings across its business. Today’s announcements show the kind of innovations which US companies may miss out on if a deal cannot be reached, putting them at a disadvantage to Chinese rivals.

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The company’s flagship P-series of smartphones focuses on camera innovations. With this latest device, we’re seeing that trend continue. There are clear enhancements to existing features in addition to a few new things for us to play with.

In the Mate 20, Huawei’s previous flagship, the company expanded the number of scenes and objects its AI could recognise to 5,000 different objects and 1,500 different scenarios across 25 categories.

While impressive, many ended up switching the feature off and Huawei even released an update to do so by default. Objects were often misrecognised and images ended up looking poorer.

Huawei has made clear improvements with the P30 Pro. Aside from one amusing occurrence where my dog was recognised as a panda – and I’m fairly sure he’s not – the AI recognition has excelled, and even surprised (in a good way.)

The standout moment was taking a shot of a flower. From a distance, the AI identified the shot was of some ‘greenery’ and made the colours punchier. Framing more of the flower caused the AI to switch over to ‘flowers’ and made it sharper with a nice depth-of-field bringing the object into focus while blurring the backdrop.

Moving closer still, to capture small details of the flower, caused the AI to switch to ‘super-macro’. This mode uses the P30 Pro’s incredible macro capabilities of taking images just 2.5cm away.

Low-light photography is another area where Huawei is harnessing AI to elevate its performance. The AI image stabilisation allows the user to capture long-exposure photographs without the need for a tripod.

In the image below, both shots were taken from the same place in near pitch-black conditions:

One implementation of AI we’re unconvinced about is the smartphone’s use for HDR. As you can see below, the feature led to a washed-out image which you’d not expect from a HDR shot:

Huawei has issued updates in the past to improve the camera performance of its devices, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for one to address this. For now, it seems better to keep the HDR feature switched off.

Ahead of the P30 announcement, Huawei hyped the device’s zooming capabilities. Based on our tests, we can understand why:

In the first image, I’ve had to mark where the small daffodil is that we’re zooming in on. At 5x, due to being an optical zoom, we’re seeing no quality loss. At 10x, Huawei makes use of AI for a hybrid zoom that it claims is ‘lossless’ (we think there’s some loss, but it’s negligible.)

At 50x zoom, we’re seeing a noticeable loss of image quality. However, that is an incredible zoom for a smartphone camera and is only enabled through AI stabilisation. The resulting image is still recognisable even though it won’t be winning awards. Considering how difficult it is to pick out the flower by eye in the non-zoomed image, it’s a commendable performance.

Moving slightly away from photography into videography, the P30 Pro uses AI in combination with OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation) to keep things steady in rough conditions. We put it through some fairly extreme tests of waving the device while recording, and even going for a jog.

In both scenarios, the AI stabilisation performed admirably. While it was not perfectly stable, the result was viewable and it’s hard to imagine stabilisation getting much better (although, I have been surprised in the past.)

A clip of the AI video stabilisation is available in our YouTube review below:

Finally, we’ve benchmarked the Huawei P30 Pro against the company’s previous flagship – the Mate 20 Pro. Here are the results:

Your eyes aren’t deceiving you, the P30 Pro had a slightly lower overall result. It’s a surprise given both use the same NPU, CPU, and GPU. In fact, the P30 Pro has 2GB more RAM to play with over the Mate 20 Pro (8GB vs 6GB).

Benchmarks only tell a small part of the story and this one is overwhelmingly positive. Huawei has excelled itself and set the bar for AI on a smartphone with the P30 Pro.

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If you’ve ever read a comprehensive smartphone review, you’ve likely heard of AnTuTu. The company’s smartphone benchmarking tool is often used for testing and comparing the CPU and 3D performance of devices.

With dedicated AI chips now appearing in devices from the mid-range to flagships, AnTuTu has decided it’s time for a benchmark to determine their performance.

In a blog post, AnTuTu says its benchmark uses two categories – ‘Image Classification’, and ‘Object Recognition’.

AI News tested AnTuTu’s benchmark on a Huawei Mate 20 Pro which currently ranks second on AnTuTu’s general performance leaderboard for Android devices. Huawei often brags about the AI performance of its flagship devices.

The first test classifies 200 images as fast as possible using the Inception v3 neural network:

In the second test, 600-frame video is reviewed using the MobileNet SSD neural network:

AnTuTu then delivers an overall benchmark score, along with the scores for each category.

Here is how our Mate 20 Pro fared:

• Overall – 65,222
• Image Classification – 41,717
• Object Detection – 23,505

Each of the categories is further broken down into scores for ‘speed’ and ‘accuracy’. If accuracy is traded for speed, then a lower score will be given.

AnTuTu says this helps to prevent cheating by devices processing the data fast but without providing the right answers. Smartphone manufacturers have been caught artificially-inflating their benchmarks in the past; so it provides added confidence in the results.

For a general look at the AI features in the Mate 20 Pro, see our video below:

You can download the AI benchmark from AnTuTu here.

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Dr Chenglu Wang (left in picture) has been with Huawei for over four years and has overseen the integration of AI with the company’s products.

HiAI is Huawei’s mobile AI open platform which consists of three layers:

• Application – Focuses on enabling AI for apps to make them more intelligent and powerful.
• Chip – Aims to achieve optimal performance with heterogeneous scheduling and NPU acceleration.
• Service – Represents the company’s cloud-based services.

Together, they offer the following capabilities:

• Computer Vision (CV) Engine – CV is the capabilities by which computers simulate the human visual system to sense the ambient environment, and determine, recognise, and understand the composition of space. The capabilities include image super-resolution, facial recognition, and object recognition.
• Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Engine – ASR converts human voice into text, to facilitate further parsing and understanding by computers. The capabilities include speech recognition, speech conversion, and text-to-speech (TTS).
• Natural Language Understanding (NLU) Engine – NLU is combined with the ASR engine, to enable apps to understand human voice or text, thereby performing communication or natural actions. The capabilities include word segmentation, text entity recognition, emotive tendency analysis, and machine translation.

According to Wang, the adoption of the HiAI platform is meeting Huawei’s expectations. However, some features – such as ASR and NLU – are still locked to China.

When asked when more of HiAI’s features will expand to other regions, Wang responded:

“Huawei’s consumer cloud is not so popular globally. However, this year we will launch some consumer services in Europe so maybe we can see more deployed globally… maybe we can get some alignment with China.”

Last year, we saw Huawei debut the world’s first smartphone AI chipset – the Kirin 970 – in the Mate 10. The AI chip provided things such as limited automatic camera scene selection, improved background noise reduction in calls, and pixel quality enhancement when taking pictures of documents.

Huawei’s next flagship, the P20 Pro, improved on the automatic camera scene selection to recognise 500+ scenarios across 19 categories. The company also introduced AIS (AI Image Stabilisation) which uses machine learning algorithms to predict and counteract shaky movements on a frame-by-frame basis.

This year, with the Mate 20, Huawei has debuted the Kirin 980 which boasts the world’s first dual-NPU (Neural Processing Unit). Huawei claims it offers an incredible 226 percent improvement over its predecessor.

Our first question to Wang was if the Kirin 980’s extra performance has allowed Huawei to do anything it couldn’t with the 970. Wang couldn’t provide any examples and even said: “It’s almost the same”.

When asked if that means Mate 20’s AI features will be coming to last year’s model, Wang said they will be.

However, a slide provided by the company provides more detail about the benefits of switching from a single NPU to a dual:

As mentioned in our video review of the Mate 20 Pro’s AI features at the bottom of this article, and confirmed by the above slide, real-time video processing takes a lot of power. It will be interesting to see how the Kirin 970 handles things such as the real-time AI colour video effect if it’s truly coming to Kirin 970 devices.

In recent weeks, Huawei pushed an update which switched off the ‘Master AI’ automatic camera scene recognition feature that debuted in the Mate 10. The feature can be re-enabled in the settings but is now off by default.

Master AI was a focal point of both the Mate 10 and P20 launches and we always felt it served as a great example of how AI can make life simpler. The feature provided better results when taking a picture unless the individual has time, and know-how, to manually change settings on a scene-by-scene basis.

When asked why Huawei took the decision to switch off such a prominent feature, Wang responded:

“Master AI is Huawei’s first try to use an AI-enabled camera. After we launched this functionality, they don’t like the phone… so we’re changing strategy. We give the basic capability and give this feature as an option, not just automatically.”

The explanation makes some amount of sense. As a techie, it can sometimes be difficult to put yourself in the view of a standard consumer. The average person, however, often just wants a phone with a camera that works as they expect.

Back in April, Huawei VP of Software Engineering Felix Zhang said the company wants to introduce the first digital assistant with ‘emotional interactions’.

Many industry leaders are working towards such a landmark moment but Zhang provided no timeline as to when Huawei expects to launch its own. We asked Wang when he expects such a digital assistant to become available.

“From a software view, it’s still a very big gap,” he said. “Maybe two or three years if the industry can work together.”

You can find our video showing the Mate 20’s AI features below:

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We’ve come to expect great things from Huawei in AI. The company is quickly establishing itself as a leading player in the arena – just last week announcing new chipsets designed to seize the AI throne from Silicon Valley giants.

In the Mate 20, Huawei is debuting its latest processor – the Kirin 980.

Huawei reminded us last year’s flagship, the Mate 10, featured the world’s first AI smartphone chipset in the Kirin 970. Its successor achieves several new world-firsts.

Over the Kirin 970, the 980 delivers 75 percent better CPU and 46 percent better GPU performance. Here at AI News, what we care most about is the NPU (Neural Processing Unit) performance.

Fortunately, Huawei didn’t let us down. Over its predecessor, the NPU boasts an incredible 226 percent improvement. However, bragging about numbers is one thing but another to deliver tangible benefits.

Huawei CEO Richard Yu spent little time showcasing how the company is using AI to deliver features above its competition. The company’s tagline for the event was ‘A Higher Intelligence’ (note the letters in bold) so an emphasis on AI was to be expected.

The most impressive use of AI is for real-time Hollywood-like video effects. A demo video showed people kept in colour running while the background was in black and white. Such a feat takes serious processing power, so it was a testament to the Kirin 980’s capabilities.

Identity recognition allows Huawei to automatically trim videos with certain people in or out of the video. This would be especially useful for events such as kids parties, where you want as much footage of your own child while removing others running about.

For those looking to trim some inches off their waistline, calorie counting is one of the most effective methods.

Speaking from experience, manually inputting every meal takes a long time and is one of the main reasons people give up. Huawei is stepping in to use AI for automatically recognising foods and portion sizes to work out their calories.

In the camera, Huawei is using HiVision to detect landmarks and provide relevant information to the user. The feature also performs instant translations.

Anyone who’s used their smartphone to go for a run will know how inaccurate GPS can be. Huawei fitted a runner with various flagship smartphones and each showed a different wonky route, except the Mate 20 (of course.)

The company achieved this with AI-powered satellite selection combined with dual-frequency L1 + L5 GPS for 10x better accuracy.

Even the company’s new Huawei Watch GT makes use of AI. According to Huawei, machine learning is part of the secret behind the device’s touted two-week battery life.

Last year, Huawei impressed with AI photography features but little else. Those have returned, and been improved, but it’s good to see the company show what else AI can be used for.

Based on what we’ve seen today, Huawei’s devices have reached a higher intelligence than what we’ve seen from other smartphone manufacturers. China was once infamous for its copycats, but others would now do well to flatter Huawei with some imitation of their own.

Check out our hands-on video with the Mate 20 Pro’s AI features below:

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During HUAWEI CONNECT 2018 in Shanghai, the company announced how it will take on the likes of Nvidia and Qualcomm. The first part of that strategy is new hardware.

Huawei unveiled new chipsets it’s calling the Ascend 910 and Ascend 310. These chips are both designed for AI but target different use cases.

The 910 is targeted at data centres; a territory where Nvidia is particularly strong. Huawei claims it can process data faster than competitors – potentially reducing calculations from weeks or days to a matter of minutes.

The 310, meanwhile, is targeted at more consumer-orientated connected devices such as smartwatches. This is an area more dominated by Qualcomm.

Apart from the Ascend series of chips, Huawei’s full-stack AI portfolio also includes the following:

• CANN (Compute Architecture for Neural Networks): A chip operators library and highly automated operators development toolkit
• MindSpore: A unified training and inference framework for device, edge, and cloud (both standalone and cooperative)
• Application enablement: Full-pipeline services (ModelArts), hierarchical APIs, and pre-integrated solutions

“Huawei’s AI strategy is to invest in basic research and talent development, build a full-stack, all-scenario AI portfolio, and foster an open global ecosystem,” said Huawei Rotating CEO Eric Xu during his keynote.

The focus of Huawei’s AI research will be to improve power-efficiency and security, in addition to automation capabilities.

In terms of its AI portfolio, the company wants to ensure its platform is affordable, versatile across scenarios, and easy-to-use.

“Going forward, we need to think of new ways to prepare our business and industry for change,” said Xu. “There are clear signs that AI will change or disrupt a whole host of industries.”

Until now, Huawei has focused primarily on AI chips for its smartphones. The ‘Kirin 970’ was first introduced last year, followed by the Kirin 980 which is set to debut in the company’s Mate 20 flagship being announced next week.

AI News will be at the event to see how the Kirin 980 has improved and speak with Huawei execs about their strategy. Be sure to check back for more coverage.

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“We want to introduce emotional interactions,” said Felix Zhang, VP of Software Engineering at Huawei, in an interview with CNBC. “We believe that in the future all of our end users will want to interact with the system more passionately.”

If the movie ‘Her’ comes to mind when hearing about Huawei’s plans, executives said they were inspired by the film. The protagonist in Her falls in love with his digital assistant who adapts to his emotional needs.

Today’s interactions with digital assistants like Siri are quick but emotionless and scripted experiences. Huawei wants their future assistant to be able to continue a conversation longer for a more natural and personal discussion.

“Huawei’s new digital assistant, powered by artificial intelligence, will try to continue the talks as long as possible so that the user does not feel he is alone,” said Editor Lu, Director of AI at Huawei’s consumer business group.

The company’s priority continues to be improving the intelligence of its assistant to ensure it’s able to carry out tasks without a user having to touch their devices in many cases.

“The first step is to give your assistant a high IQ, and then you have to give him a high percentage of EQ emotions,” continues Lu.

Prioritising intelligence makes sense, nobody wants a chatty assistant — digital or otherwise — who ultimately cannot do their job.

Do you think adding emotions to digital assistants is a good idea?

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Last year, we covered the impressive AI-powered capabilities of the Mate 10 Pro. This year, the company is starting to really take advantage of its dedicated NPU (Neural Processing Unit).

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of the features, it’s worth taking a second to appreciate the effort Huawei puts into developing its technologies. In fact, Huawei now spends €10.4 billion each year on R&D to rank it sixth place globally. For perspective, this is even ahead of Apple.

It’s clear the company’s R&D is resulting in real-world performance. Compared against the AI processing capabilities of market-leading chips from Qualcomm and Apple, the Kirin processor developed by Huawei beats them across a range of benchmarks.

We all know benchmarks are one thing, but it’s what the performance offers to end users which matters.

Last year, Huawei introduced what it called the ‘First Generation AI Camera’ in the Mate 10. We were impressed with the speed in which the AI could detect scenes and objects to optimise the camera for the best shots, but the number it could recognise was limited.

Huawei is building on last year’s functionality to offer what it’s calling ‘Pro Skills with Master AI’ to its users. The company aims to offer the capabilities of a dedicated camera with the simplicity expected from a smartphone.

As of writing, it certainly appears to have succeeded. The P20 now tops the DxOMark rankings which are often seen as the closest to an industry standard. This feat was achieved through a combination of innovative hardware and, of course, artificial intelligence.

The onboard AI can now recognise 500+ scenarios across 19 categories. While impressive, you’d be right to say the scene detection is an expected iterative upgrade over last year’s innovation. However, that’s not all Huawei had for us today.

Electronic image stabilisation (EIS) was the first of its kind to come to smartphones. Later, manufacturers took inspiration from high-end dedicated cameras and began to use optical image stabilisation (OIS) which suspends the lens itself to absorb sudden movements. Huawei is now looking to make the next leap with, you probably guessed it, AI image stabilisation (AIS).

The results are pretty spectacular. The AI is really a (serious) advancement of EIS, with the NPU using machine learning algorithms to predict and counteract shaky movements on a frame-by-frame basis.

DxOMark is once again impressed. Ranking the video recording side of the P20 Pro alone, the company gave a score of 98 to set yet another record.

Huawei’s AIS is also used for still photographs to an impressive degree. Anyone with some knowledge of photography will know that in order to get decent night shots you will often find yourself needing to hold a camera very still to allow enough light into the sensor. In the past, especially with smartphones, this required a tripod. Now Huawei claims its AIS is eliminating the need for most scenarios.

A photo taken by Huawei CEO Richard Yu was shown to the audience. At first, it seemed disappointing compared to other shots we’d seen throughout his presentation. Yu then revealed the buildings in the background of his photo were unable to be seen by his own eye yet clearly visible in the photo. Along with the AIS, this would have been aided by the camera’s maximum ISO sensitivity of 102400 (the same as a Canon 5D Mark IV DSLR.) For comparison, the iPhone X’s maximum is 6400.

Motion photography can be notoriously difficult and it often leaves users with blurry photos during the most critical moments. A feature Huawei is calling ‘4D Predictive Focus’ uses AI to keep track of objects in motion and where they’re heading to predict where it needs to focus next for the best shots. We had a brief chance to test out the feature on a person on a swing and the shot was in full focus in contrast to even our Mate 10 Pro despite that device also having a well-respected camera setup.

While this sums up the significant advancements Huawei has made in photography through AI, it’s not all it’s been doing in the field. We had a chance to sit down and interview the company’s director of AI product management and we’ll be posting our insights from that conversation in the coming days.

Are you impressed with Huawei’s use of AI for photography?

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