PSA: Some Pixel AI features may not work if you unlock your device's bootloader

Although unlocking a device’s bootloader and rooting opens a world of new features and capabilities, you might want to steer clear of it if you have a Google Pixel device and plan on using its built-in AI features. That’s because some of the new AI-powered features that debuted with the Pixel 9 series don’t seem to work on devices with an unlocked bootloader.

As per several reports on the XDA forums, some Pixel AI features apparently stop working as soon as you unlock your device’s bootloader. These include new features like Pixel Screenshots, Pixel Studio, Call Notes, and AI weather reports from the new Pixel Weather app.

User reports indicate that these features don’t work on Pixel 8 and Pixel 9 series devices with an unlocked bootloader. In addition, Google’s one-year free Gemini Advanced promo, which is offered with the Pixel 9 Pro, is not available on bootloader-unlocked devices.

Some users were able to get a few features to work with varying degrees of success by installing various Magisk modules and spoofing the device fingerprint to a Pixel 9 series device. However, the only reliable fix so far seems to be unrooting and locking the bootloader.

While we don’t know exactly why Google may be preventing users from accessing these features on rooted and bootloader-unlocked devices, the underlying cause seems to be related to an error in server-side integrity verification. Preliminary testing conducted by users on the forums reveals that the issue affects features that rely on AICore models, and locking the bootloader resolves the problem.

We’ve contacted Google for a comment on the matter, and we’ll update you as soon as we have more information.

Thanks to Aryeh N. for the tip!