Samsung had officially confirmed the name of it’s AI assistant, which is to be called Bixby. The new AI will launch alongside the Galaxy S8, and new information from the company makes existing assistants appear to lack in key areas.
According to a report from Samsung, Bixby will be a fundamental component of the S8’s interface, rather than an add-on, and come pre-loaded with 10 Bixby-supported applications at launch.
Samsung describes Bixby as having context awareness, meaning users will be able to interact with the platform using a number of modes, including touch and voice commands.
However, when an app becomes Bixby-enabled, Bixby will be able to support almost every task the app is able to perform. A statement from Samsung claims that existing assistants on the market, such as Siri or Cortana, only support a few selected tasks for an application.
“Samsung has a conceptually new philosophy to the problem: instead of humans learning how the machine interacts with the world (a reflection of the abilities of designers), it is the machine that needs to learn and adapt to us. The interface must be natural and intuitive enough to flatten the learning curve regardless of the number of functions being added,” said Samsung in its blog post.
“Bixby will not require users to remember specific commands”
In addition, Bixby will not require users to remember specific commands, but rather will be able to understand statements with incomplete information and execute the command to the best of its knowledge. The dedicated Bixby button on the side of the device to remove any confusion around activating the voice interface.
Bixby is at the heart of its Samsung’s software going forward and will play a large role in not only the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, but in future Samsung devices as well.
“We have thousands of software developers supporting this effort… With the continued investment from Samsung on artificial intelligence, the possibility of what Bixby can become is endless.”
Source: Samsung
