The year 2025 has seen nearly every smartphone brand tout the virtues of artificial intelligence. But with the exception of Google and its Gemini assistant on Pixel phones, we haven’t seen AI companies making an aggressive hardware push in the segment. That’s about to change.
T-Mobile’s parent company has announced plans for an “AI Phone” that is being developed in partnership with Perplexity. The AI company, which counts Nvidia and Jeff Bezos among its investors, will offer its eponymous AI tool for the phone.
Just like the Gemini integration on Google’s Pixel phones or Siri running the show on iPhones, the upcoming AI Phone will have Perplexity available at a system-wide level. Users will be able to interact with the AI assistant even on the Lock Screen.
We are proud to partner with @deutschetelekom to make Perplexity Assistant the native feature on their new AI Phone. pic.twitter.com/rYwsuySLW4
— Perplexity (@perplexity_ai) March 3, 2025
In addition to Perplexity, the phone will also offer access to Google Cloud AI, Picsart, and ElevenLabs. The latter recently inked a deal with Spotify and also launched its own publishing platform that lets users generate audiobooks within a few minutes using AI tools for free.
PicsArt, Google Cloud, and ElevenLabs will be accessible via a dedicated Magenta AI app. Google Cloud will bring vision-based AI analysis capabilities, ElevenLabs will turn user-uploaded content into podcasts, while Picsart will help with generating fun images.
As far as Perplexity’s role on the AI Phone goes, it will come with a familiar set of tricks such as voice interaction, translations, and answering queries based on information pulled from the internet.
Notably, the Perplexity integration might also offer some agentic capabilities, as well. “The AI assistant can also do shopping and write emails conveniently and without having to switch between apps,” says Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile.
It is unclear how the AI agent will be able to execute tasks, but there’s certainly some precedent out there. OpenAI recently introduced Operator, a tool that can accomplish tasks such as booking a ticket or ordering food on behalf of users. Google’s Gemini relies on a system of extension to perform chores across other platforms.
Deutsche Telekom says its Perplexity-powered AI phone will be officially launched in the second half of 2025. As per TechCrunch, the phone will be priced under a thousand dollars and will hit the shelves at some point in 2026.
