Key Takeaways
- After an announcement earlier this year, Motorola is launching Moto AI in an open beta starting today, November 27th.
- Catch Me Up provides notification summaries, Pay Attention offers transcription tools for local recordings, and Remember This uses screenshots and photos to provide contextually-rich information.
- It’s available for the 2024 Moto Razr and Razr+, as well as the Moto Edge 50 Ultra internationally.
After a surprisingly solid 2023, it’s been a quiet year for Motorola. While AP reviewers like myself found plenty to like in both of this year’s Razr launches, the rest of Moto’s lineup just didn’t impress. The company’s long-running G-series is filled with more bloat than ever, while flagships like the Moto Edge 50 Pro and 50 Ultra never made a US debut. Starting today, though, Motorola is hoping to turn over a new leaf, with the official debut of its long-promised Moto AI suite — in beta, of course.
Moto AI is exactly what you’d expect, a collection of AI-powered tools that should serve as a massive selling point for the company throughout the next 12 months and beyond. First announced alongside this year’s Razr lineup, Moto AI in its latest form consists of three new tools: Catch Me Up, Pay Attention, and Remember This. All three, likewise, are activated with a double-tap on the back of the device, Pixel-style.
Three new features, but only one looks truly promising
I’ll let you decide for yourself
As cynical as I’ve been feeling about on-device AI lately, I actually really appreciate Motorola’s implementation here. Although I’d argue this beta period is months behind schedule — and really, shouldn’t require a sign-up process to begin with — I like seeing a company focus on just a few simple tools, while leaving the rest of the work to apps like Gemini, which ships as the default assistant on both 2024 Razrs. It’s in line with Apple’s (pretty disappointing) toolset, and a far cry from the spaghetti-against-the-wall strategy taken by Samsung.
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That said, the tools themselves… Well, let’s take it one by one. Catch Me Up sounds a lot like the notification summaries I recently panned on the iPhone 16 Pro Max, but with a slightly smarter approach. Rather than simply grouping notifications from individual apps into an on-screen blurb that may or may not be correct, Moto AI waits for you to ask for a summation of what you’ve missed, then wraps it up into a single list of actionable items. It seems like this is specifically focused on missed messages and phone calls, but that reined-in scope could make it much more usable than what we’ve seen on iOS.
However, the video demo shared by Motorola simply repeats singular texts back at you (or, in the case of missed phone calls, lets you know that someone has called repeatedly). I’m curious to see how Catch Me Up works with missed conversations in group chats, or multiple incoming messages about different topics from the same person. If it works well, maybe it’s the sort of thing Moto eventually extends to other incoming notifications. If it doesn’t, maybe its limited scope is a blessing in disguise.
I’m even colder on the other two tools. Pay Attention isn’t as interesting as its name implies. This is just Motorola’s version of a recorder with built-in transcription and summarization tools, albeit with a flashier name. This is pretty well-tread territory, so I’m hoping Moto crushes it out of the gate, especially as I start to decide what phones I’m taking to CES early next year. No one’s done this quite as well as Google, though, and even its on-device summarizations have struggled out of the gate.
Finally, Remember This is likely the weakest of the three, largely owing to a confusing demo. On paper, it’s supposed to act as “an intelligent companion,” according to Motorola’s announcement today, allowing you to store photos and screenshots in a journal-style app. In theory, you can use this data to ask your Razr questions, like “what time should I get to the airport” after you’ve scanned your boarding pass. In the demo, though, Motorola’s assistant app simply responds with “two hours before your flight,” which is not only not using the contextual data of a boarding pass, it’s something that could be pre-programmed and apply to any app, regardless of whether or not it’s “powered by AI.”
Also as part of today’s announcement, Motorola has a new “accessible search bar” designed to sift through on-device files and web results, complete with natural language support. No video demo for this one, but it’s potentially the best feature announced today, so stay tuned while we wait to get our hands on it.
Regardless of my concerns, Moto AI is ready to roll out in open beta. Users on this year’s Razr+ and Razr (released internationally as the Razr 50 Ultra and Razr 50, respectively) and the Moto Edge 50 Ultra should receive a notification starting today, November 27, with details on how to sign up. Otherwise, you can head to Motorola’s website for more information.
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