After Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, Samsung too is set to launch its own digital assistant Bixby. This artificial Intelligence-equipped assistant will be the new intelligent interface which will come with Samsung’s next flagship phone Samsung Galaxy S8.
According to Samsung, “As the capabilities of machines such as smartphones, PCs, home appliances and IoT devices become more diverse, the interfaces on these devices are becoming too complicated for users to take advantage of.” Bixby is Samsung’s solution to this problem.
Samsung says Bixby is fundamentally different from other voice agents and assistants in the market. A deeper experience is what makes it stand out, the company says.
And how?
Unlike existing assistants that support only a few tasks, Bixby will be able to support almost every task that the application is capable of performing using the conventional interface.
Bixby is also equipped t understand the current context of an application. “When using a Bixby-enabled application, users will be able to call upon Bixby at any time and it will understand the current context and state of the application and will allow users to carry out the current work-in-progress continuously,” says Injong Rhee, executive vice president and head of R&D, software and services, Samsung Electronics.
Lastly, Bixby will be smart enough to understand commands even with incomplete information and execute the commanded task to the best of its knowledge,
The company says that when the Galaxy S8 is launched later this month, a subset of preinstalled applications in the phone will be Bixby-enabled. Eventually, this set will keep expanding and will soon be applied to all of Samsung’s appliances as well.
“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,” Samsung says.