You may have heard something about this AI stuff. It’s been making a bit of a splash in the zeitgeist lately, to put it mildly. Striking while the iron is hot, Anbernic has jumped into the pool with the latest OTA update for the RG557 with Anbernic AI.

The menu of the Anbernic AI suite

Anbernic has done more here than hop on the LLM train, though; they have developed a custom-branded app that uses AI implementations in a sensible way for users of an emulation handheld. The update promises live chat functionality for on-the-fly assistance with a game you might be playing, live translation services for titles from outside your region, and even an AI photo editing suite.

Have they achieved what they set out to do with the update? Mostly yes, albeit with some caveats. Like so many other things in this hobby, the device does deliver on what it promises it will do, albeit with some classic jank and speed bumps along the way. Join me for an overview of my first twenty-four hours toying with Anbernic’s AI Emulation helper.

The Update

So if you already own an RG557, you should now receive an OTA update notification the next time you power on your handheld. The update process takes some time. To put it scientifically, it took approximately the length of one episode of SpongeBob with my son, without commercials. Let’s call it 22 mins. The majority of that time seemed to be spent installing the actual update file, rather than some huge bulk download.

Advertised feature set of the Anbernic AI software c/o Anbernic

After finalizing and a reboot, you’ll be greeted with the notification that the Anbernic AI app has been installed on your handheld. Other additions from the update include the new 3DS emulator Azahar, an update to a stable build of Citra-MMJ (Which to pick!?), and a default to dynamic HD wallpapers on the Android launcher.

Under the Hood

That chat model keeps it in the realm of gaming

The first thing I could think to do when booting up the Anbernic AI suite for the first time was to interact with its chatbot. The first question that came to mind was to tell me a little about itself. I didn’t expect the language model to be running locally on the RG557 hardware, but for whatever reason, it was the first question that popped into my head.

Choose your AI backend

Despite the AI saying otherwise, a quick glimpse into the settings menu confirms that the Anbernic AI is connecting to a cloud backend of either Deepseek or Qwen (Alibaba model). Regardless of what was running the show behind the scenes, the chatbot performs as anyone might expect, albeit much more gaming-focused than one might be used to at this point in time. The focus has clearly been made on the model serving its intended purpose as a gaming assistant.

The Chat Assistant

So as I mentioned, the Anbernic AI chatbot is a Deepseek or Qwin model, prompted to be a gaming assistant. It will answer questions about specific games and strategies that users can try. It will not, however, identify anything about the game live, and go from there. There is an option to have an accessible chatbot window accessible from the right side of the screen at all times, but how useful that may be to you depends on how much you’re willing to prompt the bot with what you’re working with. Otherwise, it works mostly as intended.

You will have to describe what you’re currently playing. It’s not magic yet

I can’t say that I can really see a use case where I’d want it to be on all the time as it stands now. I’ll still reach for my phone to look up a solution for a game I might be having difficulty with, versus describing the situation to an LLM on the device and seeing what it comes back with.

I can understand the bridge Anbernic is trying to create for users, but the utility isn’t quite there yet (for me). Plus, I’m old and obstinate, so there’s some of that too.

Live Translation, Sort Of

So, one of the biggest use cases for a built-in AI on an emulation handheld would have to be the ability to translate text from other languages into your preferred native tongue. Anbernic allows you to enable the AI service as a layer running on top of other applications, and you can choose how you’d like it to be implemented.

The translation does work, but when I tell it to

You can see the prominent “A” button overlay appearing in the image above. This is the AI live translation button. Hitting this button at any time will activate the AI to begin translating any foreign text it sees on screen to the language you’ve selected. This feature does work, but in my testing, I could never get it to the point of being persistent. I would have to initiate the input every time I wanted something new translated on screen.

Great for navigating menus and settings

It should be noted that this whole software package is still very early, and it’s likely that these features will be smoothed over with time. As it stands, I would consider the translator to be a useful tool for navigating games with menus in foreign languages, but not necessarily something that would be practical for text-heavy games in another language entirely. It just isn’t fluid enough yet to work as it might in a lot of people’s minds. This won’t replace translated ROMs for me, not yet, at least.

Image Editor/Creator

This seems like one of the superfluous features that has no real reason to be here other than it can be. I’m fine with this approach, but it looks like some corners are being cut here somewhere, and I’m not sure if this shouldn’t be considered a flag for users of the app.

When using the image generation portion of the suite, where images are generated in a certain selected style and then guided by a text prompt, I ran into something interesting. When I executed the command, Android threw up a system warning that there was “Active IP forgery occurring”.

Image generation prompts can produce some interesting results

This is not a warning that I have ever seen on an Android device before, be it gaming, phone, TV, or otherwise. I can’t help but wonder if Anbernic has rigged this software to log in to a service, spoofed as another device, in the interest of bypassing any sort of usage restrictions or account needed? Could be nothing, but I’ll be interested to hear if it’s happening to other users.

Speaking of accounts, you don’t seem to need one anywhere. This is certainly a plus for users not wanting to tie their email to yet another service, and that’s without getting into the whole foreign data center training rabbit hole that I have no interest in going down for the purposes of this article.

It’s just nice to be able to avoid personally tying myself to a service of questionable provenance and IP use. If using it gives you pause, I wouldn’t blame you, but this is the landscape that we occupy in this hobby. Corners are cut to meet consumer wants.

Using the service is up to you, just know that you’ll be without recourse outside of China.

I would consider using this AI suite to be in the same security ballpark as the RixelHK ROM Downloading app. It’s not going to be for everyone, it’s mildly sketchy, but it’s here for those who want it. As a consumer, it’s difficult to fault Anbernic for making the effort.

Image Analysis

Under the section of the app dubbed “Learning and Education” lies the AI image analysis. The AI will give you its breakdown of the contents of the photo and background information on the things it picks up.

A breakdown of my RH article image

While calling out the MagicX Mini Zero 28 would be a bit much to ask, I was impressed by what the instant analysis produced back by the software. I question how much real-world utility this feature would have when gaming, but it’s still cool that it’s on offer here.

Conclusions

If you’re on the fence about picking up the RG557, I don’t think this update is the killer app that will push people over the edge. These functionalities are available elsewhere on other devices, and my actual need to have them incorporated into my emulation gaming is minimal.

That being said, if you take it for what it is, it’s cool to have. Anbernic AI is a fun and useful tool to give their users. Are they riding the hype train a bit? Sure, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting ideas and actual applications for the technology in this space.

There’s a lot to unpack inside this app, and I’m sure there will be additional amusing discoveries along the way as things continue to evolve. If you want a fun and quirky AI experience, go for it. Just keep your expectations rooted in the reality of current limitations within the evolving tech. With that mindset, I think Anbernic has extended a fun option for emulation fans to get a little more out of their classic games, and I think we’re likely to continue seeing this app evolve and be incorporated into compatible products across the company lineup.

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