I want you to be able to do anything with your smartphone that it can do. It’s your tool, so it should work for you. Of course, I mean that for everyone; a phone is a tool, but it’s also a very personal belonging and deeply integrated into modern life. Each of us should have choices on how we want to use it.

That choice is slowly being taken away, and faceless corporations are deciding more and more what we want get. The best example of all this is AI. Whether you like it or not, want to use it or not, it will be there. It will only get worse from here.

Case in point — Samsung, like Motorola, looks to be working on deeply integrating Perplexity AI into its Galaxy smartphones. I’m going to be upfront — I do not trust Perplexity as a company. I’m not claiming there’s anything malicious going on, but the company’s track record simply gives me no reason to trust them.

I really don’t trust Google, Samsung, Apple, or anyone else either, not when it comes to the ability to do anything with my phone. Once something is deeply integrated into the OS, such as an AI agent from the factory, all bets are off. You probably can’t tell exactly what it’s capable of and must blindly trust people who aim to make a lot of money from you. This has to stop.

I want to be clear about what I’m talking about. Phone makers use AI to do everything nowadays. AI tries to optimize your network connections, creates a photo when you press the camera button, and it’s part of what tells your phone to stop charging before it blows up. I am not referring to this type of AI, although there may be a more effective, albeit more expensive, way to handle these tasks.

I’m talking about AI like Google Gemini, Bixby, or now Perplexity. AI gets in your face if you let it, but it is always there to do things someone else decided you wanted it to do. When software like that gets a set of elevated permissions (meaning it can do more with the system and data than even you can), it needs to be because we asked for it.

I wasn’t planning on buying a new Galaxy phone this year, but it’s one I will often recommend. I think Samsung makes good products. If I were thinking of buying one, seeing a third party in the mix in ways that could be too invasive, I’d probably decline. I’m not pointing my finger at Samsung alone — I’m also wary of buying a new Razr or a Pixel due to the invasive AI that has been built into the system.