Google explains why Android AICore occasionally takes up more storage
Source: 9to5Google
What is Android AICore?
Android AICore lets you “run generative AI features directly on your Android phone or tablet’s hardware.” The models, such as Gemini Nano, are inherently large, but Google has provided a detailed explanation of why AICore storage can occasionally spike.
AICore is available on Android 14 and higher for supported devices (processors).
Features that use AICore
- Advanced proofreading – enhances grammar correction and language understanding as you type.
- Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) – converts streamed audio and audio files into text transcripts.
- Scam detection – identifies messages that may be spam or scams.
- Smart reply – provides high‑quality, context‑aware response suggestions in messaging apps (e.g., WhatsApp, Line, KakaoTalk via Gboard).
- Summarization – automatically creates concise summaries of recorded audio (e.g., in the Recorder app).
- Translation – translates text from one language to another.
Benefits of on‑device AI
- “Sensitive information remains on your device. It’s never sent to the cloud or to Google.”
- “AI‑powered features work even when you have no network connection or are in Airplane mode. This includes text summarization and smart replies.”
- “Local processing removes the lag associated with cloud‑based services, providing a faster and more reliable experience.”
Why storage use increases
A Google support article explains that when a new version of Gemini Nano is released, AICore “temporarily keeps both the old and new versions of the model for up to 3 days.” This acts as a fail‑safe, allowing the phone to instantly revert to the older version if the new update encounters an error, rather than having to download gigabytes of data again.
Once the system confirms the update is stable, the extra storage space is cleared automatically.