Many people are not familiar with Bixby, but Samsung users have had to endure the virtual assistant for the past decade, with varying degrees of success. With the arrival of AI to Samsung, many did not know what would happen to Bixby.
A Samsung executive has declared to CNBC that the company is “working very hard” to equip its voice assistant with artificial intelligence functions, suggesting that the company sees Géminis as a competitor, not as a substitute.
It’s good to know, because rumors were talking about an imminent death of Bixby. Earlier this year, when Samsung announced a bunch of new generative AI features for its flagship phones, their voice assistant was barely mentioned.
Bixby is not dead, just in the AI workshop
Samsung and Google also emphasized that the Galaxy S24 phones would use Gemini Nano, the AI model on the Google device. It wouldn’t have been far-fetched to see Samsung replace Bixby with the Gemini-powered Google Assistant, but apparently, that’s not the plan.
Won-joon Choi, executive vice president of mobile at Samsung, told CNBC: “I think we need to redefine the role of Bixby, so that Bixby can be equipped with generative AI,” and added that it would have to be “smarter” and capable of conversing more naturally.
Samsung is not the only technology company that is trying to incorporate AI into its voice assistant: it is expected that Apple will announce an AI-powered Siri at this year’s WWDC.
Meanwhile, the AI features of the Galaxy S24 have arrived on last year’s phones through the One UI 6.1 update. Galaxy AI, as the whole package is called, is currently free. If Samsung plans to charge for its AI features in the future, it will have to offer much more than it is capable of doing now. Whatever that vision may be, Bixby seems to be a part of it.
