It was not long ago when Samsung unveiled their attempt at making a smart AI-based assistant called Bixby. Debuting with Galaxy S8, it was meant to offer competition to likes of Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Bixby has had a delayed rollout across the world on selected Samsung smartphones and yet Samsung has announced the first major update to Bixby — Bixby 2.0.
The major change that Bixby embraces in version 2.0 is its openness to the public, just like Google’s Assistant. Samsung says that Bixby will be available to everyone as it is now an open source smart assistant. This means that Bixby could now be a part of any non-Samsung smartphone, TV, refrigerator, home speaker and any form of connected technology. This brings it on par with Amazon’s Alexa, which is also shaking hands with many device manufacturers such as HTC and Motorola. Will Bixby will be available as a standalone AI app like Microsoft’s Cortana? We will have to wait and see.
Apart from that, Bixby can now differentiate between individual voices, which means that there can be personalised profiles of Bixby for each member of your family. Bixby can be a friendly and playful assistant to your kids while being a serious newsreader to you while getting ready for office.
We will have to see whether Bixby can generate enough interests for it draws substantial amount of time and money from Samsung as well as consumers. Samsung says that AI is “the next major tectonic shift” and Bixby along with other smart assistants will be responsible for taking us into the future of computing.
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