Samsung today announced the second-generation version of its Bixby voice assistant, seven months after Bixby was first unveiled ahead of the launch of the Galaxy S8.
According to Samsung, Bixby 2.0 is a "fundamental leap forward for digital assistants" and a "bold reinvention of the platform," designed with the aim of making Bixby available on "any and all devices."
Bixby 2.0 will be available on smartphones, TVs, refrigerators, home speakers, and other connected technology products. Bixby 2.0 will be "open," allowing developers to choose how users interact with Bixby in their services.
Samsung says Bixby 2.0 features enhanced natural language capabilities to support more natural commands and complex processing, so it can "really get to know and understand" who you are and who members of your family are.
Bixby, a Siri competitor, was designed to be deeply integrated within apps, differentiating it from other AI-based assistants like Siri and Cortana. Samsung ran into trouble with Bixby early on, though, and was not able to include the assistant in the English versions of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ due to performance issues.
While Bixby performed well in Korean, its English voice recognition capabilities lagged behind, and so Bixby was not added to the Galaxy S8 and S8+ models in the United States until July, three months after the devices launched.
Galaxy S8 owners have complained that Bixby can be confusing and frustrating to use, and a lack of enthusiasm for the feature has even caused Samsung to implement a feature that allows the dedicated Bixby button on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 to be disabled.
Bixby was built using technology Samsung acquired from Viv, an AI assistant that was developed by some of the creators originally responsible for Apple's Siri.
Samsung is launching a private beta program with the Bixby SDK, available for select developers.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)"Bixby, blow up my Samsung"
edit: Opinion as it relates to me. YMMV
Siri is pretty useless, sure it recognizes the words, but it can't do anything. I always get... I'm sorry, I can't do that yet.
For a minute I thought that this article was about Bixby, I was mistaken…And the search results for Siri are awful. I find my self opening the chrome browser to use their search function as Siri's search result JUST SUCK!
Bixby is amazing if you use it how it is met to be used. Much better than Siri.......
You mean if you ignore the things it can’t do but only use the ones it can? Sounds pretty amazing. /sTypical Samsung, always throwing crap at the wall hoping some of it sticks.
Actually they are creating things that have real use. Bixby controls the internal functions of the phone, so it can be quite useful. Siri seems to be more of a party gimmick to ask it stupid questions and see what it says.It’s a competitor to Siri? How do I get it to work with Apple Music, Apple Watch, and CarPlay?
Very intelligent.You mean if you ignore the things it can’t do but only use the ones it can? Sounds pretty amazing. /s
If you try to use Microsoft Word to create a spreadsheet, it isn't go well. You use a tool for what it was intended. No, you can't be a moron and expect it to help you.