Here are Fairphone's plans for AI

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Originally published at: Here are Fairphone's plans for AI. - Fairphone

Apple has Apple Intelligence, Samsung has Galaxy AI, Google has Gemini. At Fairphone, we’re excited about the possibilities of AI and what it means for us… but also wary of the costs involved. And we’re not talking money.



The environmental consequences of AI are scary… as of right now, at least.



While there is still a lot of speculation about exactly how much energy is used for doing the things that artificial intelligence does, the consensus is that it uses A LOT. While a single query on ChatGPT is said to use less energy than a light bulb powered on for a full minute, this adds up when you have millions of users asking all sorts of questions to OpenAI’s game-changing tech. Cutting-edge large-language models like GPT require a lot of computing power, using up hundreds of megawatt-hours for a single training run. Then, there’s the energy costs of maintaining the infrastructure associated with AI, from the servers to the cooling to the networking. It has been reported Google’s seen a 48% surge in their emissions since 2019, assumed to be a result of Gemini’s training sessions. In 2022, the company reported a 13% increase in greenhouse gas emissions as well, and while it hasn’t been singularly attributed to their AI use, people are assuming the link.



Having said that, it’s not all gloom and doom. There is already a considerable push towards renewable energy to power these data centers. Since 2017, Google has matched 100% of its data center and office energy usage with renewable energy purchases, aiming to operate entirely on carbon-free energy by 2030. Just last week, the company announced a $20 billion investment in renewable energy, with plans to build cleaner energy systems, battery storage, and grid upgrades to power Google’s data centers. Google also utilizes AI developed by DeepMind to optimize cooling mechanisms at their data centers, reducing the energy used by a whopping 40%. That’s fighting fire with fire in the best way possible.



Our idea of innovation has always been different

This brings us to our next point. While the buzzword for innovation in 2025 seems to be AI, we have always seen it differently. For us, real innovation is about solving real-world problems. Like electronic waste, planned obsolescence, unfair working conditions, to name a few. Our focus will continue to be tackling these issues; batting for repairability and longer life spans, improved recycling and take-back mechanisms, better workers’ rights. These are issues that need fixing right now, and are much higher up on our list of priorities right now.

That’s not to say the latest Fairphones won’t have AI features.

We already do.

The Fairphone 5 supports Google Gemini out of the box

The Fairphone 5, which currently runs on Android 14, already supports many Google Gemini features, though not all of them. Google has made some Gemini functionalities exclusive to the Pixel, and they decide if and when they will roll these features out to other Android devices.

So what can Gemini do for you with Fairphone? Long-pressing the power button or flicking the screen from the bottom-left should bring up the Gemini assistant—if it doesn’t, you might need to open the Gemini app on your phone and change your specific settings. You can use Gemini to ask questions, summarize data, get contextual information about what’s on your screen, translate stuff in real time, and much more. Gemini also offers AI-powered photo editing, which means you can seamlessly cut out people and objects from photos with the click of a button. It’s also worth mentioning that our camera systems in both the Fairphone 4 and 5 use AI algorithms to optimize auto settings and for post-processing, especially in low-light conditions.

Tip: If you can’t find Google Gemini on your phone, you might need to download it to your device from the Play Store. The app is compatible with Fairphone 4 and Fairphone 3+ as well, although all features might not work.

While we do offer Gemini features, we still understand everyone might not be as excited about AI, especially given the environmental impacts and privacy concerns that it comes with. That’s why it’s important for you to know that you can actively choose to switch off Gemini on your phone as well. Access the Settings menu on your device, and scroll down to the Google submenu. From here, click All Services, and then Search, Assistant and Voice. Here, you will see the different digital assistants available on your device and the option to switch them off. You can also monitor the data being used by Gemini either through the app, or through your Google profile settings via a web browser.

To sum up…

As it stands, we will not be working on a Fairphone AI assistant for now. Instead, Fairphoners can use Google’s robust Gemini assistant to scratch that AI-ssistant itch. We will continue using AI where we can see it tangibly improve the user experience, like camera optimization and low-light imaging, for example. Meanwhile, we’re looking into the behind-the-scenes of AI, in terms of energy consumption and emissions and so on. We are always open to ideas where we can use AI to optimize operations while still being energy efficient. In the meantime, we will continue to innovate where it matters more to us; making the industry a fairer place for everyone.

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Fairphone’s plans for AI might very well be their plans that I’m the least interested in.

What’s the plans for the security updates? Are you working on getting them bi-monthly/monthly for the FP4/FP5 as planned?

Anything in sight for better customer support?

What’s the status on Android 14 for the FP4? Still nothing?

Are you going to bring back the always on display for the FP5?

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Thanks @loseyourself :+1:
I had the same thoughts when I read the post. Everyone seems to be forced to write and/or do anything related to AI, and FP seems to follow that trend, too.
At the same time it would be much more interesting and indeed vital to keep up with all the promises and expectations induced in the past by FP. AI or no AI will not help on that.

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Oh boy🤦‍♂️

Rather focus on the promised basics that FP is still struggling with. Like consistent and high quality software updates. Many users seem to be frustrated about them.

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Did any of you guys read the article at all?

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So it all comes down to “This is a PR news article about Google Gemini”?

Or what are they trying to tell us here exactly?

The title says clearly “we have plans doing AI” (if you announce it like that it sounds like big plans IMO) and your quote states “we don’t plan to do anything AI really but look Google Gemini has you covered”… So… like the others, I assume…I too am confused about the nature of this post.

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The way I see it, this post is about Fairphone saying they won’t be riding the AI hype train (even reminding people of the huge environmental impact; IMHO something quite aligned to their general mission) but for those who really, really “need” AI features, they can do so by using Google Gemini on either FP5, FP4 or FP3+.

I guess in this time and age you can’t just say nothing about AI when you’re a tech company.

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Yes, I read the post completely. And even if they don’t plan to be working on a Fairphone AI assistant (which is good news at least, saving resources at FP) they should focus on their promises instead of posting some hyped bulls**t AI topic. That post really made me angry!

@Ingo They ride the AI hype train as they do support and service: Half-hearted

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As things are, Fairphone could write about the weather in Amsterdam, and you could bet money on posts arriving like “If you have the time to look out the window or at a weather App/Widget, you could instead fix problem A, B or C.”
How ever one might think about such simple cr*pping on the carpet, it’s the internet. The best way for Fairphone to deal with it should be to start fixing the problems.

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I disagree. This blog post doeyn’t feel like “Riding a hype train” to me.
About “half-hearted”, well, it’s probably a different way of phrasing “you can’t say nothing about AI”.

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I guess. They do ride the marketing train though. And ride it to death sometimes :grinning: Also in this post. The amount of marketing glitter is what triggered me. The message, if there really is one, could be said in 3 lines

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What is AI worth, if the FP support is absolutely miserable ?

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That is what I meant with riding the hype train but not completely: To me it seems as if they felt a necessity to add something regarding AI, no matter what.

And yes, one could very well interpret my (and some other’s) reaction as whataboutism. However, in the current situation they should do something to (re)build some trust of their customers in their company instead of trying to ride some hype wave.

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For me the title is “Here are Fairphone’s plans for AI” :thinking:

:man_facepalming::woman_facepalming::person_facepalming::man_facepalming::woman_facepalming::person_facepalming:

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Yes I did. Hence why I’m wondering why they decided to announce that they aren’t doing anything with AI right after saying that exciting things are in the pipeline. Is them not doing something exciting?

The last two announcements reek of “CEO trying to show the board he’s making a difference” to me. And this announcement in particular smells like “could have been a tweet or a section in the FAQ”. Tone deaf is what I would call it. This is the type of announcement that is typically done at the same time as a bigger, more exciting announcement.

Meanwhile it’s been 7 months since they said nothing has been decided about the always on display. That could have been an announcement. Or an announcement on the FP4 Android 14 situation. If they wanted to frame it they could frame it as Qualcomm being the bad guy when it comes to Android development, and it probably is.

I just find the priorities of this company strange. They should strive to improve on their mistakes, IMO. It’s impossible to beat Big Tech when it comes to raw performance, but they can beat them when it comes to building a tight community, built on the idea that you don’t need a flagship as an average user. And you really don’t. All you really need is to deliver a solid experience and to keep your promises.

Removing features that can already be disabled ain’t it, chief.

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I don’t expect Fairphone B.V. to make any significant investment in AI. It’s not in their scope of business which IMNSHO is developing and making phones and accessories for them.

If I had any interest in AI, I would turn to companies that are investing in that. But I don’t have any interest, so that’s it.

The last AI I was interested in was SHRDLU. Yes, that’s sixties kind of AI. When AI was all about “worlds”.

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I am very confused and bitterly disappointed by fairphone. Yes, the post states that AI causes a problematic energy consumption, but then they try to tell us that this is not an issue, because google uses clean energy and we should happily use Gemini.

But google is willing to use nuclear power for AI.

What I also miss is something about the problematic act of gathering the training data and the copyrights issues that there are.

There is also no mention of the often terribly wrong answers, thus the limitations of LLMs.

Also, by encouraging us to use Gemini and therefore causing all the power consumption and with nuclear power, causing utterly expensive consumption, that google will eventually come and make us pay.

There are so many problematic points, I cannot grasp how fairphone can come about with a ‘rest assured, everything will be good’ post.

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I didn’t read that at all in the article.
I think they pretty soberly state what’s there and what can be done. And they give details on how to disable it.
If they just tell you there’s a window and it can be jumped through they are not encouraging you to happily do it.

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We love it! (and you will, too)

But it will all be good, soon.

Carbon-free is greenwashing. Like compensation is.

And here look how you can turn it on and how cool this is! yikes

… so yeah, you can turn it off, if you are not one of the cool kids.

So, when this is not encouraging to use it, what is it then?

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You left that out deliberately and invented the rest.

This has not the same meaning, and you know it.

Oh no! There’s a feature on your phone you can use if you want. Quick! Everybody duck and cover! :roll_eyes:

You are trying so hard to read your own stuff into the given text but missed the opportunity to read into this bit that using AI would make you the uncool kid?

The article’s not at fault, I think.
And I’m not on record of being a huge fan of Fairphone’s latest attempts at marketing prose.

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