Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Chip Revolutionizes Pet Photography with AI

A New Phone Chip Helps You Take the Perfect Pet Pawtrait. I Tried It Out

Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand. In my iCloud there are 3,542 photos of my cat. Whether he's curled up like a cinnamon roll or basking in a sunbeam, he is constant perfection, but the photos I take of him are not all winners. Among my vast library of feline photos are many duplicates -- a result of me snapping away until I get the perfect photo of him staring down the lens. I know I'm not the only pet owner with this precise problem. Most of us don't have pets who are also professional models, and we therefore usually need several takes to get the perfect shot. But with the latest developments in camera technology, this might soon be a problem of the past. At its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, Qualcomm demonstrated how its latest mobile chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, will enable us to take the perfect shot of our pets with no duplicates needed. The updated neural processing unit (NPU) that sits on the chipset powers a variety of AI features, which can process information coming from multiple inputs and data sources simultaneously. It's thanks to this technology that some phone cameras in the coming year will be able to track your pet and use autofocus to ensure the shutter blinks exactly when your beloved, dart-eyed pet is staring straight down the lens. Basically, instead of relying on you to react in the correct split second, the camera will do your work for you. In a live demonstration featuring a beautiful (and beautifully soft) golden retriever called Remy, I also saw how burst mode could be used to capture an array of photos of Remy leaping to catch a tennis ball, with AI picking the best action shot for you. And the work of the AI doesn't stop there. Once your phone has captured the money shot, Qualcomm's pet hair enhancement tool can pick out and better define the individual strands of your pet's fur, providing you with an even richer image to post to Instagram, print out for your wall or gaze at on your phone screen late at night when you're far away in Hawaii and missing the sensation of your cat curling up on your chest in the night. (Or is that just me?) Since 2014, almost every smartphone camera has used AI to enhance photos whether you know it or not, says Durga Malladi, senior VP of technology planning at Qualcomm. "Whether it's lighting or image stabilization, computational photography took over every time you take a picture," he says. With every year that goes by, the AI photography features available on your phone gets better thanks to the power and speed of the chips within. Smarter pet photography is just one of the many options available from Qualcomm's suite of photography features for phone makers who choose to use the Snapdragon 8 Elite in their top-end devices this year. We're excited to see which device makers choose to take advantage of this. The only bad news? The beautiful golden retriever will sadly not be included with your next smartphone purchase. But, there's surely no better time to head to your local pet shelter (here in Hawaii, that's Maui Humane Society) to adopt your very own furry friend -- although remember that a dog is for life, not just for photos.

Pet photos are going to look a lot better on Snapdragon 8 Elite phones -- here's why

WAILEI, Hawaii -- Remi is a good boy -- some might even argue a very good boy. But in spite of his undeniable charms, Remi suffers from the same shortcoming that plagues other dogs, regardless of breed: he doesn't always cooperate with photographers. The Snapdragon 8 Elite introduced by Qualcomm this week includes a feature that allows Remi and other pets to be the very best that can be -- an AI-enhanced pet suite feature that snaps photos of your fury friends whether they want to pose for you or not. While a lot of the focus surround mobile chipsets centers around the performance, power efficiency and neural engine, there's more to the system-on-chip inside your phone than the CPU, GPU and neural processor. Mobile chipsets include an image signal processor -- the AI ISP in the case of the Snapdragon 8 Elite -- to extend the camera capabilities of your smartphone. For the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm introduced a number of changes to its ISP, which boosts pixel throughput by 35% to capture 4.3 gigapixels per second. The Hexagon neural processor now has a direct line to the ISP, so it's able to make adjust to images live, without a loss of data. And Qualcomm says the ISP supports "limitless segmentation" -- basically an image can be separated into more than 250 different layers so that each one can be optimized. These improvements all seem to play a part in the AI-based pet capture features supported by the Snapdragon 8 Elite. And at its Snapdragon Summit this week, Qualcomm figured out a pretty clever way to show off those capabilities -- a hotel conference room filled with Remi and other four-legged pals to melt the hardened hearts of seasoned tech reporters like this one, who attended the summit as Qualcomm's guest. The AI pet photography tools work in three different ways. You can set the camera to activate when your pet looks directly at the lens, and it will take a quick burst of shots, where you can select the best one. The camera can also take a long burst of photos, with AI choosing the best shots based on parameters you've set. The other AI-powered tool for pet photos comes in handy with action shots. Using the segmentation abilities of the Snapdragon 8 Elite's ISP, photo processing can sharpen and highlight a pet's fur so that those details aren't lost in the blur of action as your pet leaps, zooms and otherwise frolics. In Qualcomm's demo room, we saw Remi jump to catch a tennis ball, with the resulting shot highlighting the details on his fur as he fully extended himself to snap that ball out of the air. It's up to the phone makers who use Qualcomm's silicon as to what features they choose to incorporate in the final versions of their handset. But given how much we love our pets -- especially when it comes to taking photos of them -- I can't imagine a situation where a phone maker using the Snapdragon 8 Elite in their devices wouldn't want to include these AI-based pet photo tools.

First Time Lucky: How Your Next Phone Could Capture Your Perfect Pet Pawtrait

Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand. In my iCloud there are 3,542 photos of my cat. Whether he's curled up like a cinnamon roll or basking in a sunbeam, he is constant perfection, but the photos I take of him are not all winners. Among my vast library of feline photos are many duplicates - a result of me snapping away until I get the perfect photo of him staring down the lens. I know I'm not the only pet owner with this precise problem. Most of us don't have pets who are also professional models, and we therefore usually need several takes to get the perfect shot. But with the latest developments in camera technology, this might soon be a problem of the past. At its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, Qualcomm demonstrated how its latest mobile chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, will enable us to take the perfect shot of our pets with no duplicates needed. The updated neural processing unit (NPU) that sits on the chipset powers a variety of AI features, which can process information coming from multiple inputs and data sources simultaneously. It's thanks to this technology that some phone cameras in the coming year will be able to track your pet and use autofocus to ensure the shutter blinks exactly when your beloved, dart-y eyed pet is staring straight down the lens. Basically, instead of relying on you to react in the correct split second, the camera will do your work for you. In a live demonstration featuring a beautiful (and beautifully soft) golden retriever called Remy, I also saw how burst mode could be used to capture an array of photos of Remy leaping to catch a tennis ball, with AI picking the best action shot for you. And the work of the AI doesn't stop there. Once your phone has captured the money shot, Qualcomm's pet hair enhancement tool can pick out and better define the individual strands of your pet's fur, providing you with an even richer image to post to Instagram, print out for your wall or gaze at on your phone screen late at night when you're far away from in Hawaii missing the sensation of your cat curling up on your chest in the night (just me?). Since 2014, almost every smartphone camera has used AI to enhance photos whether you know it or not, says Durga Malladi, Senior VP of Technology Planning at Qualcomm. "Whether it's lighting or image stabilization, computational photography took over every time you take a picture," he says. With every year that goes by, the AI photography features available on your phone gets better thanks to the power and speed of the chips within. Smarter pet photography is just one of many options that will be available from Qualcomm's suite of photography features to phone makers this year that choose to use the Snapdragon 8 Elite in their top-end devices this year. We're excited to see which device makers choose to take advantage of this. The only bad news? The beautiful golden retriever will sadly not be included with your next smartphone purchase. Instead, there's surely no better time to head to your local pet shelter (here in Hawaii that's Maui Humane Society) to adopt your very own furry friend - although remember a dog is for life, not just for photos.