LG today said it has new features on deck for the V30 handset that will add more artificial intelligence to the device. The company has spent more than a year researching AI and how best to implement it. Some of its ambitions were realized with the release of its ThinQ platform earlier this year. Now, LG is targeting the V30 specifically. First up is Voice AI, what LG says are custom commands for Google Assistant made available only to the V30. The nine new tools allow users to run apps and change settings through voice commands alone. For example, V30 owners can tell their device to take a panorama, time-lapse, or slow-motion photo, perform an image search, or scan a QR code, among actions. These new commands join 23 existing commands already available to the V30. Next, LG is taking aim at the camera with Vision AI, or the ability to recognize objects and adjust shooting parameters to capture better photos. Vision AI will work on the LG V30 a bit like it does Huawei's Mate 10 Pro camera. Some of the initial scenes the V30 will be able to recognize include portraits, food, pets, landscapes, cityscapes, flowers, sunrises, and sunsets. The camera will know what it is shooting and analyze the surrounding scene to adjust focus, white balance, and shutter speed. LG says it has scanned some 100 million images to create a database of known objects to compare against. The V30 also gains a new low-light shooting mode that should deliver far more accurate results when shooting in the dark. "The future for LG lies in AI, not just hardware specs and processing speeds," said Ha Jeung-uk, senior vice president and business unit leader for LG Electronics Mobile Communications. "Creating smarter smartphones will be our focus going forward and we are confident that consumers will appreciate the advanced user experience with the enhanced V30 that many have been asking and waiting for." LG will show off these new functionalities at the Mobile World Congress trade show later this month. LG didn't say when the updated artificial intelligence tools might reach end user devices.


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