Did Qualcomm just kill the ring light? Future Android phones will let you add a virtual, movable light source to video calls
Picture this: you jump into an important work visit, fresh-faced and ready to confidently deliver your signature “none of mine” phrase, only to discover that the light (or lack thereof) is in your work-from-home office gone you look less like a serious businessman and more like a shady Omegle user from 2010. Don’t worry: we’ve all been there.
Luckily, Qualcomm knows we’ve all been there, which is why the American semiconductor giant has seen fit to equip its newly announced Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chipset with an AI-powered, real-time lighting tool that could banish terrible video call lighting to the annals of internet history.
AI Portrait Video Re-lighting lets you add a virtual, movable light source that adapts to the contours of your face to better illuminate it in backlit environments. This lighting can be adjusted manually, or you can let your phone’s AI do the work for you, and the entire process takes place on the device, with no additional latency. Wait a minute, did Qualcomm just turn off the ring light?
Qualcomm debuted the new tool at Snapdragon Summit 2024 and demonstrated its potential in an unnamed dummy phone, though we could potentially see the AI Portrait Video Re-lighting feature (albeit with a different name) in some of the best Android phones from 2025 – think of the much-rumored Samsung Galaxy S25, OnePlus 13, Xiaomi 15 Ultra, and so on.
That’s because all of these upcoming flagship phones are expected to be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, meaning their respective OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) will have the option to implement this new AI technology as they see fit.
As Qualcomm’s Senior Director of Product Management, Judd Heape, confirmed to Ny Breaking in a roundtable discussion at the Snapdragon Summit (in reference to Limitless Segmentation, another Snapdragon 8 Elite-specific camera feature): “Limitless Segmentation is embedded in the (Snapdragon 8 Elite) camera framework – included with the baseline camera. So it’s up to OEMs to determine how to integrate it (and other AI features) into key products.”
Unlimited Segmentation segments an image into more than 250 layers, optimizing and enhancing each layer (including faces, hair, clothing, objects and backgrounds) in the process, so presumably Qualcomm’s AI Portrait Video Re-lighting technology could also be applied to still portraits applied. Could we see a “Portraits by Qualcomm” label added to images taken with top Samsung phones in the near future? It’s certainly a possibility.
In any case, we’re happy to see Qualcomm using the power of its Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset to develop practical generative AI tools like this. Sure, custom emoji makers are great, but they won’t help you save face if your video call’s lighting just isn’t cutting it.