China’s Z.ai open sources AI agent tool for phones after ByteDance privacy backlash
Beijing-based Z.ai said its work in ‘teaching AI how to use a smartphone’ dates back to early 2023
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up Z.ai on Tuesday open sourced a tool it spent years developing to put AI capability into every smartphone, a move that follows backlash against ByteDance’s newly released AI phone over privacy concerns.
Included in the framework are the AutoGLM-Phone-9B foundational model and Phone Use, a suite of AI capabilities and tools that enable the agent to operate a smartphone, currently supporting only Android devices.
The company said in a statement that it decided to make Phone Agent the open source alternative to AutoGLM so it could turn “AI’s capability to operate smartphones into a public foundation collectively owned and fine-tuned by the whole industry”.
Z.ai said its work in “teaching AI how to use a smartphone” dated back to early 2023. After initial failures, it was able to launch a usable version of AutoGLM in October last year, which the company claimed was the first AI agent capable of operating a smartphone based on a user’s voice command.
In a demonstration at the time, Z.ai’s AutoGLM was able to complete tasks such as ordering coffee and making online purchases.
