Samsung’s Virtual Assistant Bixby Will Soon Get a Gen-AI Makeover

• Samsung has announced that their native virtual assistant Bixby will get an AI update
• No official release date has been set but we can expect to get the first look by the end of 2024 or early 2025

Samsung has revealed that they are planning to upgrade their virtual assistant Bixby with Gen-AI.

The news comes from Samsung's executive vice president, Won-joon Choi, who said that they have already started the project and have been working really hard to integrate Gen AI with Bixby.

With the emergence of generative AI and LLM (large language model) technology, I believe that we have to redefine the role of Bixby so that Bixby could be equipped with generative AI and become smarter in the future.Won-joon Choi, Samsung's executive vice president

Bixby isn't a new product. It was first launched in 2017 along with the Galaxy S8 series of smartphones. Over the years, the assistant was also integrated with other Samsung products like smart TVs, smart home appliances, and other accessories.

While it has delivered amazing performance so far, the recent AI boom has made it inferior to its competitors. Popular chat assistants like OpenAI, Google's Gemini, and Microsoft's CoPilot have taken the lead.

Bixby can help you launch other apps, set an alarm, send a text, or check the weather. But that's about it. In short, Bixby can only work with existing content and tools but when it comes to content generation, only the AI chatbots can help you.This upgrade is expected to make Bixby more conversational instead of strictly following the question-answer model.

Hence, Samsung has decided to up its game and put Bixby on an equal footing with these AI alternatives by integrating the tool with GenAI.

The timing of this announcement is really interesting. Apple will be hosting its annual developer conference (WWDC 2024) on June 10 where they are expected to announce iOS 18 which will have Gen AI-powered Siri (Apple's virtual assistant).

It looks like competition is heating up, but Apple might have a head start since there's no official timeline for the release of Bixby's AI version. Taking into account all the information we currently have, we can expect to see the first glimpse by the end of 2024 or at least by early 2025.

Samsung's AI Initiatives

Like many other tech companies, Samsung is heavily investing in AI to keep up with the competition. Along with Bixby getting an AI update, they have also launched the new AI-integrated Galaxy S24 smartphone series.

While the hardware isn't much different, it's what's on the inside that makes it interesting.

• For starters, a new feature called Circle to Search" has been added that lets users circle a name or location on a picture on their phone and look it up on Google without switching apps. You can use this tool feature on pictures you have already taken or the ones you are simply pointing your camera at.

• It also comes with an AI-powered editing tool that lets you remove reflections and shadows from your pictures or change the position of an object simply by drag-and-drop.

• Last but not least, Samsung has added a live transcription tool, which works a lot like Otter AI. For instance, let's say a caller is speaking in Spanish - a language you have no clue about. You can use this tool to get a live transcription of the conversation in real time. It also works on recorded conversations.

Samsung has also decided to introduce its own line of AI chips called Mach-1 by the first half of 2025. The news was announced during the 55th regular shareholders' meeting where Samsung Semiconductor CEO Kye Hyun Kyung said the SoC was almost done and the chip design has already received technological validation on FPGAs.

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