The AI Phone: What Will Bad Actors Do with Smart Software and a Smart Device
May 20, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Here’s a preview of one of the topics I will present at the restricted access Ciifer Conference later in 2026. AI phones in the hands of bad actors with access to smart software that can code agents, bots, smart contracts, and intelligent scripts?
The quick answer is, “First, some will raise their eyes to the sky and thank God. Second, the younger bad actors will just hop to and commit online crime.”
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough and a tiresome struggle to get you working.
Is an AI phone available for purchase now? Nope. But to one writer at Tech News World, the AI phone is zooming toward the Information Superhighway. Arrival is likely to be the near future. “OpenAI Eyes AI Agent Phone, Kuo Says” assumes the reader knows one individual Ming-Chi Kuo, who is described as “as master prognosticator.” What does this person suggest?
According to the write up report as actual factual about the future phone?
OpenAI is working with MediaTek and Qualcomm to develop smartphone processors.
I am not sure that this helps me understand the AI phone, but I did receive the message to invest in MediaTek and Qualcomm.
What else?
The biggest benefit to OpenAI and consumers is the vertical integration of AI into the device itself, maintained Siddardha Vangala, a senior AI systems engineer at MasTec, an infrastructure engineering and construction company in Coral Gables, Fla. “Today, smartphones treat AI as an add-on feature,” he told TechNewsWorld. “If OpenAI builds its own phone, it could redesign the user experience around intelligence rather than apps.” “That would enable things like persistent memory across tasks, deeper personalization, and faster on-device reasoning,” he explained. “Instead of launching separate apps, users would interact with a single intelligent interface that can coordinate services in the background.” “From an engineering standpoint,” he continued, “owning the hardware also allows optimization of AI workloads at the silicon and operating-system level, similar to how Apple optimized iPhones for machine learning.”
Okay, some detail. I don’t know what happened to the prognosticator, but here’s what this paragraph suggests to me:
- OpenAI wants to do the monopoly thing; that is, control everything for the AI phone. Okay, this is standard BAIT (big AI tech) thinking.
- AI will be the plumbing; it won’t be an add on the way Apple AI is alleged to be or what the struggling Telegram is trying to deliver with its distributed Cocoon, no investment swing at the all.
- Buy an AI phone and sucking in the user’s data is automatic; that is, no choice. The AI phone becomes a Mini-Me.
- The AI phone does everything. No apps, no play store, no nothing except the AI phone meeting one’s information needs.
The write up points its prediction at OpenAI and its “partners.” (Hey, remember Musk and Altman were once partners, so there may be more partners.)
The write up points out what I think is an obvious issue; specifically:
Security and privacy will be top concerns for an AI phone. “Since the AI agent acts on behalf of the user, it will access messages, apps, and personal data, plus it will track all activity across the device,” noted Zbynek Sopuch, CTO of Safetica, an intelligent data security solutions provider headquartered in Prague. “These very broad permissions are a slippery slope of both far too much data being collected and almost no visibility into what is even being collected,” he told TechNewsWorld. “Ultimately, users won’t know what the AI itself is doing and what data it is using. We’ve already seen examples of how AI has been exploited by bad actors,” he said, “so imagine an even worse scenario now where a compromised device means an attacker can gain access to multiple systems at once.”
Guess what? OpenAI won’t care. Without any meaningful regulatory pressure in the US, OpenAI can do what it wants. And if that company cannot pull it off, I know a number of other “me too” AI phones will become available.
What could bad actors do with an always-monitoring, always-acting automatic device capability? I will go over three potential use cases in my lecture to the cyber investigators. You, dear reader of a free blog, will have to use your imagination.
Net net: An AI phone is coming. OpenAI is not the only outfit thinking about this type of device and what it can do. Remember those pagers that detonated because a harmless device was okayed for field use in a kinetic conflict? That’s a clue. Just convert that type of play to a cyber action.
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2026
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