Google finally explains why Android AICore keeps eating your storage — and it actually makes a lot of sense
Google has clarified why the AICore system on Android devices consumes significant storage space, explaining it supports on-device AI features like smart replies and scam detection. When updates to Gemini Nano are installed, both old and new versions are temporarily stored for up to three days to allow rollback if needed. This design prioritizes reliability and user privacy by avoiding cloud dependency and enabling offline functionality.
- ▪AICore powers on-device AI features such as real-time transcription, grammar correction, and scam detection in Android 14 and above.
- ▪Google stores both old and new versions of Gemini Nano for up to three days during updates to enable quick rollback if issues occur.
- ▪Keeping AI models on-device ensures user data remains private, features work offline, and responses are faster without server latency.
- ▪The storage trade-off is necessary for local AI processing, but Google acknowledges it should have communicated the reason earlier.
- ▪Gemini Nano runs locally on supported hardware, eliminating the need to send data to remote servers for processing.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
If you’ve ever glanced at your Android phone’s storage breakdown and done a double-take at how much space AICore is consuming, you’re not alone. It’s one of those things that’s easy to notice and hard to explain, and for a while, Google wasn’t offering much clarity on it. That’s changed now, and the explanation turns out to be more sensible than the mystery surrounding it suggested. AICore is the on-device AI backbone that powers a growing list of features on Android 14 and above — smart replies in WhatsApp, scam detection in messages, real-time transcription, grammar correction, audio summarization, and more.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Digital Trends.
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