Elon Musk Described an AI Device to Replace Phones in 5 Years

This is a heads up. All we will need is a connection chip or interface and we access a virtual cell phone or super computer in the Cloud.

We will get there and it can all be AI supported.

Now recall our aliens with large black artificial eyes.  I duspect they are space adapted humanitiy.

Elon Musk Described an AI Device to Replace Phones in 5 Years

October 31, 2025 by Brian Wang

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/10/elon-musk-described-an-ai-device-to-replace-phones-in-5-years.html#

Elon Musk predicts that traditional smartphones will evolve into lightweight edge nodes optimized for AI inference rather than standalone hardware. This is a broader architectural transformation driven by AI advancements.

Musk describes the future device (formerly known as a phone) as an edge node for AI inference particularly for AI video inference. It would feature minimal hardware—essentially a screen, audio output, radios for connectivity and on-device AI processing to handle local computations. The heavy lifting happens via seamless communication between on-device AI and massive server-side AI models.

The device will generate real-time video of anything that you could possibly want. This implies hyper-personalized, on-demand content creation. AI rendering a custom movie scene, virtual meeting with synthesized participants, or augmented reality overlays based on your thoughts or voice prompts. Bandwidth is minimized by pushing as much AI as possible to the edge (device), reducing data transfer needs.

There will be no traditional OS or apps. Musk emphasizes There won’t be operating systems. There won’t be apps in the future. Instead, the device anticipates and displays what you need.

Musk estimates this transition in five or six years. He ties it to exponential AI improvements, noting current trends like coherent 10-15 minute AI-generated videos (using tools like Grok’s Imagine) as precursors.

On-device AI processes raw data locally, sending only refined queries to servers.

Musk hints at new streams, such as personalized content generation.

Exactly. Companies are going find that building a database on everyone will ultimately fail because they’re going to run up against human nature of jealousy guarding personal privacy against any odds. And I’m sure they’ll be quite sad-face about it, but those are just the rules of humanity nature that cannot be changed, full stop.

They will ultimately have to come up with a way to give the public the goodies without erosion of privacy if they want to remain relevant, whether they like it or not. There is zero reason to collect more data and track people. Zero.Reply

And this will all be free will it, since most people will no longer have a job?Reply

The hardware description sounds a lot like today’s phones. The main difference is AI replacing the OS.

I think this will go the same way as Google Glass: the producer thinks it’s a cool idea, a few people agree, but the bigger market will reject it. There is resistance from users to having AI pushed on them everywhere, there’s long-standing and hard to change usage habits, there are older and less tech-savvy users who don’t understand AI, there are popular social platforms that aren’t likely to go away that easily, and there’s the whole market of app makers and app marketplaces who would really not like this.

And if they’re planning to collect even more data and run things on the cloud, or if people suspect that it will evolve in that direction, there’ll be even more resistance.