Samsung Says 'Bixby 2.0' Smart Speaker Will Feature Multi-User Voice Recognition

Samsung has announced at the Mobile World Congress that version 2.0 of its Bixby voice assistant will launch with the Galaxy Note 9 and come with support for recognizing individual voices (via ZDNet).

Samsung mobile chief D J Koh said that Bixby 2.0 is being tested by approximately 800 partners and is helping the company to develop a "wider scope of voice assistant features", one of which is the ability to recognize individual voices on devices supporting multiple users.

Development of the feature makes sense given Samsung's plans to launch a television set with built-in Bixby next month, as well as a Bixby-enabled smart speaker set for release in the second half of 2018.

Amazon's Echo devices and Google's Home smart speakers already include voice matching settings which let multiple users access personalized services, however Apple's HomePod lacks such a feature.

For Siri commands that interact with user-specific information, only the Apple ID account holder who sets up the HomePod speaker is able to use the additional functionality, and Apple hasn't revealed any plans to bring multi-user voice recognition to its Siri virtual assistant anytime soon.

Related Roundup: HomePod

Tags: Samsung, Bixby

Buyer's Guide: HomePod (Neutral)

Top Rated Comments

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Return Zero

8 months ago

I love Bixby... It's the one reason I can honestly say that Siri isn't the worst digital assistant out there.

Rating: 10 Votes

TrueBlou

8 months ago

Other than Reminders and SMS text, is there anything else it currently can access as personal information?

So if multiple persons are sharing the same Home, only the main owner can use Siri? This looks different from other users reports...
(Still waiting wife to come back home to test this by myself)

No, anyone can use the HomePod, but it’s only linked to the account which set it up for the time being. My wife uses Siri on my HomePod.

So any commands to add things to reminders or send messages, or whatever all happen on the account which set the HomePod up.

It’s bound to change to multi-user voice recognition eventually. Apple filed a patent for just such a feature last year. So once they’ve perfected it, it’ll come in a software update.

Rating: 3 Votes

neutralguy

8 months ago

I’ve seen a real time demo of the new translate feature from the Bixby camera in the new S9. Holy crap it works amazing fast and smooth.

It's there on S8 too. I bought a boy scout survival kit for my son from Amazon. And the instruction sheet inside was in Chinese. All I had to do was turn on bixby and point the camera at the sheet. In a few second, I got the whole translation in English.

Rating: 3 Votes

rikscha

8 months ago

Give it two more years before this comes to Siri..

Rating: 2 Votes

GrumpyMom

8 months ago

I’ve seen a real time demo of the new translate feature from the Bixby camera in the new S9. Holy crap it works amazing fast and smooth.

It’s built off of Google Translate, which also works decently fast on iPhone and Google Pixel and current Samsung phones. I’m not sure if this new Bixby version saves any steps and is faster, though. I need to see the demo you saw.

Bixby isn’t horrible but needs a lot of work. The thing is, Samsung seems very committed to developing it and they’re like a dog with a bone when they want to get something right. They will keep pushing.

Rating: 2 Votes