Motorola launches ‘Moto AI’ features in beta, but teasers don’t exactly impress [Video]

Ben Schoon | Nov 27 2024 - 6:00 am PT

Motorola is launching its own set of AI features in a new “Moto AI” suite that focuses on three primary features, and they’re available starting today for select devices.

Despite Motorola’s 2024 Razr foldables being among the first devices to launch with Google’s Gemini out of the box, the company has been working on its own AI features. The new “Moto AI” suite is launching today on the Razr (2024) and Razr 50, Razr+ (2024) and Razr 50 Ultra, and the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra. The new features will be available in beta at first on an opt-in basis.

Accessing Moto AI works with a double-tap of the back of the device, at which point a menu shows up with three features. “Catch me up” is effectively a system for notification summaries, allowing users to catch up on notifications they’ve missed since they last checked the device.

“Pay attention” records audio until it’s stopped by the user, transcribing and summarizing the audio at the end.

Finally, “Remember this” can accept photos or screenshots and use the data within to answer questions later on.

These are some potentially very useful ideas, but Motorola’s teaser videos don’t exactly instill confidence around how robust the capabilities here will be.

In one video, “Catch me up” notification summaries are shown in an example that doesn’t really carry much weight, as it simply repeats individual notifications. This could be helpful as it has a hands-free aspect, but this demo doesn’t really put it through anything remotely complex, like a busy group chat.

A second demo of “Pay Attention” summarizes a journal entry about time travel while the video shows a conversation with three people taking handwritten notes, which seems like an odd combination at least.

Finally, a video for “Remember this” sees the user take a screenshot of their flight itinerary, only to later offer generic advice when the user asks what time they should leave for the airport. It correctly pulls the time of the flight when asked again, but the first answer is clearly not what the feature is advertised to do.

Of course, as with any AI product, results will vary, so we’ll be curious to see how these features actually perform in real life.

What do you think of these features so far?