The Samsung Galaxy S8 is set to be announced some time in February 2017, but new reports about new features keep coming. The latest news is regarding the rumored Artificial Intelligence (AI) voice assistant on the Galaxy S8, which will rival Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana.
As per reports, the new AI voice assistant on the Galaxy S8 will be called Bixby. The South Korean smartphone maker recently acquired a company called Viv Labs, which is an AI startup founded by the makers of Siri.
Male And Female Versions Of The AI Assistant
Apple has Siri, Google has the Google Assistant and Microsoft has Cortana. Now, according to SamMobile, Samsung will have two AI assistants in male and female versions, called Bixby and Kestra.
As per Android Authority, the company was recently granted trademarks for these names and various other variations of the names. The description for the trademark filings stated things like, "Computer software for enabling hands-free use of a mobile phone through voice recognition" and "Computer software used to process voice commands."
Samsung needs an AI assistant very badly, as competitors have had it for quite some time now. Of course, Samsung does come with an assistant called S-Voice, but that is mostly a gimmick and is nowhere as smart and useful as Siri or Google Assistant.
How Will It Help Samsung?
The Samsung Galaxy S8 will get a new payment feature called Bixby Pay. This would allow users to make payments through voice commands. Smartphones these days are all equipped with some kind of voice recognition software. However, to have an AI assistant that can understand and reply to normal human speech is pretty cool. It will be another new feature for the next galaxy smartphone.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus or whatever it may be called, will be even better with an AI assistant on board. Users can perform several actions, get answers for queries and hopefully make faster payments.