Samsung reveals the virtual assistant which supposedly to be called “Bixby” as the answer to Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. Bixby has a visual search capability and is expected to be integrated in the company’s latest smartphone Samsung Galaxy S8.
According to Newsweek, Samsung may accidentally disclose Bixby through the company’s unofficial blog SamMobile. The blog suggested that Samsung plan to integrate Bixby into its mobile payment platform Samsung Pay. The speculation is based on the beta version of Samsung Pay app with three options in the menu bar, namely Shopping, Mini and Bixby.
In order to jumpstart its artificial intelligence tools, Samsung made strategic acquisition of artificial intelligence company Viv in October last year. Following the acquisition, the company filed a patent and trademark for the name “Bixby” in South Korea. In the patent, the company described Bixby as “computer software for enabling hands-free use of a mobile phone through voice recognition.”
Bixby is expected to have its own niche with the ability to see what users see using the phone camera as the eyes according to Tech Radar. The ability will give Samsung’s Bixby few steps ahead in the artificial intelligence competition. It is because other AI tools are only able to respond from voice command.
Samsung joined the artificial intelligence race against Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon with their respective Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant and Alexa. In the near future, Nokia is expected to join the quest.
Viv was founded by the trio who created Siri, Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham. Following Apple’s acquisition of Siri in 2010, they left the Cupertino two years later and founded Viv. The trio will now equip Samsung with their AI technology which has been more advanced than Siri.
Watch report from CNET regarding Samsung’s artificial intelligence Bixby below:
