You might think that Bixby is down, but Samsung says it’s anything but out. In a recent interview, a senior executive at the company said that Samsung is “working so hard” to supercharge its voice assistant with generative AI capabilities to make it smarter and more natural sounding. The update is apparently so big, it can potentially “redefine” the role of Bixby.
Bixby was originally launched in 2017 along with the Galaxy S8 series of smartphones but it has failed to gather as much limelight as a Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, even though – today— it’s part of virtually every modern-day smart home product in its portfolio. The integration is also pretty seamless if you’re owners of Samsung’s ecosystem devices. But despite the many possibilities, it is yet to realise its true potential. Generative AI could change that.
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“With the emergence of generative AI and LLM (large language model) technology, I believe that we have to redefine the role of the Bixby, so that Bixby could be equipped with generative AI and become more smarter in the future,” Won-joon Choi, executive vice president at Samsung’s mobile business was quoted as saying by CNBC. “[This will] enable a more natural conversation,” he added.
The executive did not share any more details on how Samsung plans to do it and a timeline for when consumers might be able to use some of the newer capabilities but he did mention that the company will need “to work out an interface that supports the Samsung products in our ecosystem.”
Samsung is going all in on generative AI starting with smartphones from this year. The Galaxy S24 series launched earlier in the year with Galaxy AI, a suit of generative AI features designed to work both on device as well as over the cloud to boost users’ productivity. The company in fact plans to bring Galaxy AI to 100 million devices by the end of 2024 making generative AI more accessible to more people.
