Samsung announces Bixby – The AI based virtual assistant for smartphones

Samsung, today have announced its much awaited AI (Artificial Intelligence) based voice assistant called Bixby to take on the likes of Apple’s Siri, Google Voice Assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa among others. It is worth mentioning that Samsung had acquired Viv Labs back in October last year. Viv Labs are better known for developing Siri, which like we mentioned earlier is Apple’s Voice assistant. Bixby, according to Samsung is a more superior AI based assistant which stands out from all the other Voice assistants in existence.
 

 
Samsung claims that the learning curve for users to get along with Bixby will be minimal and that most of the learning will be done by Bixby than the user. In order for Bixby to get access to an app and perform tasks based on user commands, the app must be Bixby-enabled. Samsung also announced that it will be pre-loading a few Bixby enabled apps when it launches its next flagship smartphone which is going to be the Galaxy S8. The Galaxy S8 will also have a dedicated button to wake up Bixby and perform tasks more quickly than before. An SDK for developers to make their apps Bixby enabled will also be released soon.
Unlike the current voice assistants, which can only control a few aspects of an application Bixby can support almost every feature of an app as requested by the user. Users also don’t have to memorize keywords to get a task performed by Bixby and can instead just hint about it and the AI will prompt you with the most relevant task based on your command.
Samsung will eventually be expanding Bixby to more Tizen appliances such as Televisions, Refrigerators, etc. However, these devices need to be always hooked up to the internet as Bixby’s AI is processed in the cloud. Smartwatches such as the Gear S2 and Gear S3, Fitness trackers such as the Gear Fit 2, etc will also be treated with Bixby as time passes by. We will have to wait till the launch of the Galaxy S8 to see how Bixby works and whether it is the next big thing from Samsung to crush its competition.