After Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant, Samsung joins the artificial intelligence race with Bixby.
The yet-to-be released Samsung S8 will have its own A.I.-powered digital assistant named Bixby. This was announced on Sunday by the company itself.
The 'Bixby' name was trademarked by the company back in October. This was done in South Korea where Samsung was founded and is based. The trademark was for a "computer software for personal information management". The company further described the trademark as a "computer application software for smartphones, mobile telephones, portable computers and tablet computers" that will be "used to operate voice recognition system[s]." Bixby will also enable "hands-free use of a mobile phone through voice recognition."
Bloomberg reports that the troubled Korean tech giant recently purchased an artificial intelligence software company based in the United States called Viv Labs Inc which is led by Dag Kittlaus, Chris Brigham, and Adam Cheyer. The group is also responsible for Siri.
Samsung explained that its digital assistant is "significantly differentiated" from the other AI voice assistant in the market today. Among its functions are: performing tasks, dictating messages, and responding to questions or queries on demand.
For one thing, the 'gender' of the AI may be different. Speculations arose that Bixby will have a male voice because Bixby is mainly considered a man's name.
Samsung is hoping all these new features of the S8 will help people forget about the Galaxy Note 7 debacle wherein the recall of the device pushed Samsung's income back by $6 billion. The company also enhanced the S7 and S7 Edge to include some of the positive features of the Galaxy Note 7.
So far, Bixby is the only new feature confirmed for the flagship line. Its other specifications like the 5.1 and 5.5-inch Super AMOLED displays are still rumors so far. Another rumor is that the S8 will have either Qualcomm's Snapdragon 830processor or Samsung's Exynos 8895.
