Samsung started the Bixby experiment many years ago. During its first days, Samsung went hard with the in-house assistant, which was meant to rival the likes of Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri. The South Korean phone maker would then include a hardware button in a bunch of its Galaxy phones to make access to Bixby faster, a development that was not popular among users. To this end, Samsung decided to drop the button, instead choosing to merge it with the power button.
Samsung has now announced new updates to Bixby, which is designed to enhance the user experience, performance, and capabilities of the intelligent assistant. With these updates, Bixby’s ability is significantly improved with enhanced language recognition, giving people even greater control over their mobile experience.
According to YoungJip Kim, Executive Vice President and Head of Artificial Intelligence Team in Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics, Bixby was created as part of a vision to create a human-to-machine interface that makes life easier and can advance over time with Samsung Galaxy innovation. The new updates build a more intelligent interface that is proactive and adaptive, giving people greater control over their mobile experience.
The new features and improvements brought by the updates enable users to customize their Bixby experience further. For instance, Bixby Text Call is now available in English. English speakers can now answer calls from anywhere by typing a message, which Bixby then converts to audio and communicates to the caller directly on their behalf.
Users can also personalize their Bixby Text Call voice using the Bixby Custom Voice Creator. The creator enables users to record different sentences for Bixby to analyze and create an AI-generated copy of their voice and tone. Currently available in Korean, the generated voice will soon be compatible with other Samsung apps beyond phone calls in the future.
Lasly, Bixby now supports changes to the custom wake-up phrase within Bixby settings, giving users another option to create a personalized wake-up phrase.
