Honor’s New AI Agent Can Read and Understand Your Screen

We must all hate booking a table at a restaurant, because it’s once again the problem tech companies are trying to solve with the power of artificial intelligence. Honor has taken the wraps off of Honor UI Agent—a “GUI-based mobile AI agent” that claims to handle tasks on your behalf by understanding the screen’s graphical user interface. Its primary demo to show off this capability? Having the agent book a restaurant, naturally, through OpenTable.

WIRED had an early opportunity to see the demo ahead of the company’s keynote at Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona, where Honor also announced its $10 billion Honor Alpha Plan. This long-term plan, envisioned by the Chinese company’s new CEO Jian Li, is lofty and largely corporate-speak, comprised of goals like “creating an intelligent phone” and “open human potential boundaries and cocreate a new paradigm for civilization.” What it really highlights is Honor’s quick pivot into prioritizing AI development for its suite of personal technology devices.

A GUI Agent

In the demo, an Honor spokesperson asked Honor’s UI Agent to book a table for four people, gave a time, and specified “local food.” (The AI takes location into account and understood that to mean Spanish food here in Barcelona.) What happens next is a little jarring—not in the way Google’s Duplex technology was when it debuted in 2018 and had Google Assistant interact with real humans to make reservations on your behalf.

Instead, you’re forced to stare at Honor’s screen, watching this agent run through the steps of finding a restaurant and booking a table through the OpenTable app. It doesn’t quite feel “smart” when you have to see the dull machinations of the process at work, though Honor tells me in the future its UI Agent won’t need to show its homework.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu