Even though Samsung is yet to introduce the Galaxy S8 and S8+ flagship smartphones; the company has come out and announced Bixby; it’s new AI assistant. Though we were not expecting Bixby now, with the Galaxy S8 and S8+ launch around the corner. Bixby is surely one of the important and highlighting features of the S8 duo. However, Samsung has mentioned that Bixby won’t be exclusive to two new flagships as the company will eventually bring it to all of its Internet-connected devices.
Let’s start how Bixby works, Bixby can be enabled by pressing the special-purpose button, and it then will prompt you for either voice or touch command, and it’s not clear if it would support text at the moment. Bixby will take into account what the user is currently doing while responding to their commands.
Samsung’s aim is to bring an assistant that will be able to talk to the user making AI assistant natural. Bixby will be able to understand what user is asking even though there is incomplete information, Samsung says that Bixby will prompt the user to provide more information and then execute the task, just the way most Assistants work nowadays.
Samsung’s announcement doesn’t make it clear what the company is aiming unique about the new AI as we don’t see anything groundbreaking. Also, the company didn’t say how Bixby would perform simple tasks like taking screenshots and in fact, we are not sure why Samsung chose to introduce Bixby to the world today. However, Samsung says that At the launch of the Galaxy S8, a set of preinstalled applications will be Bixby-enabled, which brings back the hope that it will be included with the Galaxy S8.
It is also evident that Bixby won’t work with most apps at launch and for Bixby to work, apps need to be Bixby-enabled via a tool and the functionality to enable that will be released in an SDK soon. No other details and the apps that support Bixby at the launch are unknown at the moment, and Samsung decided to stay silent about it yet.
Samsung Says:
There has been a lot of excitement and speculation about what we will deliver with the launch of the Galaxy S8 later this month, especially due to the advancements in artificial intelligence. We do have a bold vision of revolutionizing the human-to-machine interface, but that vision won’t be realized overnight. Ambition takes time.
And about Bixby being available to other internet connected devices:
Starting with our smartphones, Bixby will be gradually applied to all our appliances. In the future you would be able to control your air conditioner or TV through Bixby. Since Bixby will be implemented in the cloud, as long as a device has an internet connection and simple circuitry to receive voice inputs, it will be able to connect with Bixby. As the Bixby ecosystem grows, we believe Bixby will evolve from a smartphone interface to an interface for your life.
source: Samsung Newsroom
