Not so long ago, rumours about Samsung working on an AI-powered digital assistant started surfacing. Bixby, as Samsung is referring to their new “intelligent interface” that will début on the upcoming Galaxy S8.
Samsung claims that Bixby will be fundamentally different from other voice agents or assistants in the market, Bixby will offer a deeper experience thanks to proficiency in these three properties:
- Completeness
Bixby will be able to support almost every task that a Bixby-enabled app is capable of performing using the conventional interface (ie. touch commands). - Context Awareness
When using a Bixby-enabled application, users will be able to call upon Bixby at any time and it will understand the current context and state of the application and will allow users to carry out the current work-in-progress continuously. Bixby will allow users to weave various modes of interactions including touch or voice at any context of the application, whichever they feel is most comfortable and intuitive. - Cognitive Tolerance
Bixby will be smart enough to understand commands with incomplete information and execute the commanded task to the best of its knowledge, and then will prompt users to provide more information and take the execution of the task in piecemeal.
All that just sounds like a lot of fancy words being thrown around, the real intelligence of Bixby will be seen when the Galaxy S8 launches.
Samsung also confirmed that the Galaxy S8 will have a dedicated Bixby button. In a blog post, InJong Rhee, Samsung’s Executive Vice President, Head of R&D, Software and Services, revealed that at the launch of the Galaxy S8, a subset of pre-installed applications will be Bixby-enabled.
“This set will continue to expand over time. Our plan is to eventually release a tool (in SDK) to enable third-party developers to make their applications and services Bixby-enabled easily.”, he added.
InJong Rhee also said that Bixby will gradually be applied to all Samsung appliances in the future, including air conditioner and TVs.
