14 DAY TRIAL // Good news for Samsung fans who remain loyal to the South Korean company's products even after the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. It looks like the personal digital assistant that we were talking about last week is real and will be announced in the coming months.
Samsung recently confirmed that its upcoming flagship, the Galaxy S8, will carry an AI digital assistant inside, Reuters reports. The report comes less than one week after Samsung trademarked Bixby, an app that could be a “computer software for personal information management,” “computer application software for smartphones, mobile phones, portable computers and tablet computers, namely, software used to operate voice recognition system.”
The South Korean company acquired back in October a company called Viv Labs, to help build such a personal digital assistant. The people working for this company are the co-creators of the well-known Siri voice assistant software for Apple, so their expertise could weigh heavily on the development of Samsung's first AI digital assistant.
However, we didn't think that Samsung could come up with something so complex, so quickly. That's why we dismissed the idea that the Galaxy S8 could include Bixby, Samsung's new personal digital assistant.
Well, it looks like Samsung really wants to redeem itself in the eyes of its fans, and show the world that it can do great things. We sincerely hope that Bixby won't be rushed just to boost Galaxy S8 sales.
One other thing that hasn't been clarified by Samsung yet is the name of the AI digital assistant that it plans to integrate inside the Galaxy S8's software. Even though the company has already trademarked the name Bixby, the new report claims the AI platform will be called Viv.
The South Korean company declined to comment on what services the AI assistant would be capable of offering, but it did confirm that customers would be able to use third-party services more smoothly.
“Developers can attach and upload services to our agent. Even if Samsung doesn't do anything on its own, the more services that get attached the smarter this agent will get, learn more new services and provide them to end-users with ease,” explained Samsung Executive VP Rhee Injong during a briefing, when talking about the AI assistant.