Android 17 ties AI privacy to the price of your phone

Android 17 introduces AISeal, a hardware-isolated sandbox built on protected kernel virtual machines (pKVM) for on-device AI tasks. Flagships like the Galaxy S26 keep data local, while budget phones such as the $499 Pixel 10a and Galaxy A37 must offload screen content and data to Google's servers.

• AISeal runs on protected kernel virtual machines (pKVM)
• Galaxy S26 handles screen analysis entirely on-device
• The $499 Pixel 10a and Galaxy A37 can't run it locally
• Cheaper phones send user data to Google's remote servers