Artificial intelligence has long been a part of smartphones. AI features are already integrated into your keyboard, camera, gallery, and many other apps, but along with them, local models occupying several gigabytes of memory may quietly appear on the device.
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Moreover, the user does not need to actively use AI for these files to be stored on the smartphone. An expert from the publication “MakeUseOf” noticed that the pre-installed system app on his Galaxy S26 took up about 6 GB of memory – disabling the service freed up this space. A similar experiment with the iPhone freed up even more – 7.58 GB.
How to free up space on an Android device
If your smartphone runs Android 14 or a newer version of the operating system, it likely has a system component called AICore. It is not visible in the regular apps menu, but it can be found in the settings.
To do this, open Settings → Apps, tap the filter and sort icon, enable the “Show system apps” option, and then find AICore.
This component is a local AI model called Google Gemini Nano, which allows the phone to perform certain tasks directly on the device. AICore is used for text correction, smart replies, note creation, translation, and other AI functions.
The main advantage of this solution is that data is processed directly on the smartphone, so it does not need to be sent to a remote server each time, and some operations are performed faster. However, this comes at the cost of additional memory space. Also, Google does not allow AICore to be completely removed in the usual way. Still, the service can be disabled to free up the space it occupies.
To do this, open Settings → Apps → AICore, tap “Force stop,” then “Disable.” After that, open the three-dot menu in the upper corner again and select “Uninstall updates.”
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How to free up memory on an iPhone
A similar situation is observed on Apple smartphones that support Apple Intelligence. Apple’s AI features also use local models stored directly on the iPhone.
They are needed for functions such as Writing Tools, Siri, Live Translation, and message summaries. Therefore, even with infrequent use of artificial intelligence, the corresponding models still occupy part of the phone’s memory.
You can check the occupied space by selecting Settings → General → iPhone Storage → iOS. The AI components on the author’s iPhone 16 Pro took up 7.58 GB. For a smartphone version with 128 GB of internal memory, this is quite a significant amount.
If necessary, Apple Intelligence can be disabled. To do this, open Settings → Apple Intelligence & Siri and turn off the Apple Intelligence switch. After restarting the iPhone, the system should free up the space occupied by the models, although this may not happen immediately.
Some users also report noticing slightly longer battery life after disabling AICore and Apple Intelligence, as AI models are no longer constantly ready to launch.
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