Samsung was supposed to launch Bixby’s proper voice functionality in the United States this spring. It missed the deadline. Previous reports suggested that the delay was due to linguistic issues as Bixby was facing problems understanding English language. According to a new report, the delay is also due to data issues.
A spokesperson for the company has revealed to The Korea Herald that “Developing Bixby in other languages is taking more time than we expected mainly because of the lack of the accumulation of big data.”
What that means is that Samsung doesn’t have enough data to properly develop Bixby’s deep learning technology so that it can understand voice commands in the English language and act on them effectively.
Samsung launched a Bixby preview program for Galaxy S8 owners in the United States to collect more big data. Despite that, it appears to be facing a big problem with the lack of data. It’s unclear whether not enough people signed up for the preview or the company didn’t receive enough diversity in voice samples for work to progress significantly.
It remains to be seen when Samsung will be able to get Bixby’s voice functionality ready for users in the United States. It has already been a few months since the handset was released and it reflects badly on the company that it hasn’t been able to deliver one of the most hyped-up features of the Galaxy S8.
