Samsung’s Bixby, the company’s native virtual voice assistant, is reportedly getting a generative AI upgrade. A report had claimed that Bixby will be infused with the South Korean tech giant’s proprietary large language model (LLM) to bring new capabilities and features. However, these features were not disclosed. Earlier this week, the company hosted its second Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, where it unveiled several new Galaxy AI features coming to the Galaxy Z Fold 6, Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Buds 3 series.
Bixby is reportedly getting an AI makeover
TM Roh, President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics, told CNBC about the development, saying, “We are going to further evolve Bixby with the application of Gen AI technology.” He also added that the new Bixby will be available later this year. This will be a major upgrade in the capabilities of the virtual voice assistant that was first introduced in 2017 with the Galaxy S8 series.
Compared to the voice assistants offered by competitors like Google Assistant and Siri, Bixby does offer some unique features. For example, Bixby Home can constantly update the homepage based on the user’s behavior, showing information like the weather, reminders, news articles, and more. Bixby Vision, on the other hand, allows users to scan an object using the device’s camera. Bixby will then identify it and provide information about it.
While these features make Bixby unique, Samsung’s voice assistant struggles with the same issues as other existing assistants: not understanding contextual commands and being unable to perform complex tasks. These could improve with the integration of AI. Notably, Roh reportedly mentioned in-house generative AI, but he didn’t specify whether Galaxy AI will be used for this.
The timing of the announcement is also interesting. Last month, Apple introduced its own set of AI features under the Apple Intelligence umbrella. These AI features were integrated into existing apps. Siri was the main focus, with multiple new features including emotional and conversational tone, the ability to perform tasks in third-party apps, and even use ChatGPT to find answers to trickier questions.
With the new Bixby reportedly hitting the market later this year, it will be interesting to see how the two voice assistants compare.
