Samsung released its own virtual assistant back in 2017 serving as a rival to Apple's Siri. It has the same functions as the iPhone maker's voice assistant such as setting alarms, dictating the weather, helping with search, and more. Now, the tech giant plans to enhance it using generative AI.
AI Upgrade for Bixby
If you've been using Samsung's more recent devices, you've probably come across Bixby at some point, whether by using it on purpose or accidentally holding the home button. The voice assistant can be found on several devices including smartwatches and TVs.
Many agree that Bixby could use a few improvements, and Samsung might do that with generative AI. With chatbots gaining popularity and artificial intelligence seeing a fast-paced advancement, it was only a matter of time before this happened.
Samsung Mobile's Executive VP Won-joon Choi said that with the emergence of generative AI and large language models (LLM), he believes that they "have to redefine the role of the Bixby, so that Bixby could be equipped with generative AI and become more smarter in the future."
As mentioned in CNBC, adding AI will enable a more natural conversation and work out an interface that supports the Samsung products in the company's ecosystem. Since Bixby is the core voice assistant of Samsung, this could be a smart move for the company.
Bixby has been undeniably helpful in many situations, especially with smart TVs where typing is a hassle. Instead of typing painstakingly with arrow buttons on YouTube, for instance, you can hold the mic button on the TV remote and use it for voice-to-text.
Even then, the voice assistant is quite limited, and it can only be used for the most basic functions of a smart device. Adding AI would add more features, expanding the virtual assistant's potential uses.
The announcement comes as Apple is rumored to be gearing up for AI news for its upcoming WWDC event this 2024. Apple is lagging behind given that Samsung already announced Galaxy AI, but the iPhone maker might just have something up its sleeve.
Apple's AI Plans
Apple enthusiasts and users might be happy to hear about the rumors that the company is planning to release AI features for its smart devices, especially since other companies like Google and Samsung have already begun introducing AI functions for their smartphones.
The tech giant is said to be working on a deal with Google to power its iPhones' AI features, but MacRumors reports that it is also developing its own AI product called Apple GPT, which would compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Apple is also working on its own LLM codenamed "Ajax," which is said to be more capable than ChatGPT 3.5 as it was trained on over 200 billion parameters. In fact, the company is rumored to be experimenting with enhancements for Siri as well.
Adding AI to voice assistants from the competing tech giants could be a game changer, especially since the current capabilities of voice assistants are starting to become outdated given the wide range of uses that AI can offer.
