14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung hasn't yet officially introduced its voice assistant and reports already claim that Bixby will be more advanced than any other smartphone AI available on the market.
Korean publication ETNews reports Samsung's AI digital voice assistant will support 7 or 8 languages at launch, including English, Korean and Chinese. The rest of the supported languages haven't been mentioned, but that's quite an achievement coming from Samsung.
Currently, Google Assistant has limited support for languages other than English, so depending on what smartphone and application you use, you might be able to benefit from additional languages, or not.
A Samsung official was quoted saying, “We brought together the language data accumulated by Samsung Electronics and the excellent natural language recognition capability of Viva Labs acquired in October.”
For example, Google Pixel/Pixel XL features support for both English and German languages, while Google Home only understands English. On the other hand, Google Allo chat app fully supports English, German, Hindi, Japanese, and Portuguese.
Will Samsung get it right this time?
However, Google Assistant features deep Android integration, something that Samsung might not be able to achieve at launch. Obviously, this is just an assumption based on the previous experience, as Samsung has never been great when it comes to developing its own software.
Aside from the extended support for multiple languages, Samsung's Bixby is reportedly capable of taking advantage of a smartphone's camera in order to recognize object and text shown. Simply point the camera at a subject and Bixby will try to identify it.
Korean media also claims that Samsung plans to integrate the Bixby AI within Galaxy S8 and allow users to buy its own home appliances and electronics such as TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines.
The Bixby AI voice assistant is expected to be announced alongside Samsung Galaxy S8 on March 29. The name of the AI might be different from the one that's been trademarked last year, but that is of less importance than its capabilities.