Samsung Announces Bixby Virtual Assistant

Samsung did say several months ago that it’s working on a new virtual assistant. Rumors about the Galaxy S8 have suggested that it’s going to be called Bixby. That has all been confirmed today. Samsung has officially announced its new artificial intelligence powered virtual assistant called Bixby. It has also confirmed that the assistant will make its debut with the Galaxy S8.

Samsung says that Bixby is going to be very different from existing virtual assistants in the market, like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana. It’s going to be deeply integrated with apps that support Bixby so the virtual assistant will be able to perform any and all functions with just voice commands that can also be done by simply tapping on the display with a screen.

For example, if you want to sort the photos in the gallery by album, you can just ask Bixby to do that. Bixby will also be context aware so whenever it’s launched, it will understand the app’s current state and the context of what’s being done to effectively come to the user’s aid. This will make it blend in seamlessly with the user experience.

Samsung also points out that Bixby is not going to be rigid when it comes to voice commands. Users won’t have to remember specific voice commands to get things done. It’s said to be smart enough to understand voice commands that have incomplete information and then perform the task in the best possible way that it can think of. It goes without saying that due to its machine learning roots, Bixby will only get better as the user spends more time relying on it.

The company confirmed that it’s going to offer a Software Development Kit or SDK to developers who want to bring the power of Bixby into their own apps. It mentioned that the Galaxy S8 is going to be launched with multiple apps that have support for Bixby and that this number will be subsequently increased.

Bixby will later make its way to Samsung’s appliances like TVs as well so it won’t just be limited to Samsung’s mobile devices.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: bixby, Galaxy S8, Samsung