Samsung Officially Announces Bixby – the Contextually Aware Virtual Assistant

It’s pretty common knowledge that the Samsung Galaxy S8 will come with Samsung’s own virtual assistant, Bixby. And even before the Galaxy S8 has had the chance to go official, Samsung has officially announced Bixby.

Like Siri, Alexa and Cortana before it, Bixby was designed to learn from how humans interact with their device and detect their habits. And Samsung hopes Bixby will be able to offer more than the current slew of Ai-driven assistants out there, by focusing on three main areas. The Korean phone maker says Bixby puts an emphasis on completeness, context awareness and cognitive tolerance. Samsung also claims the virtual assistant will be able to understand complex things such as incomplete phrases and will work across multiple applications.

Being contextually aware, Bixby (accessible through an app) can discern the state an app find itself in, so it take the correct actions based on your requests  (a mix of voice and touch is permitted).

In the official press release Samsung also talks about the dedicated Bixby button which will allow Galaxy S8 users to swiftly activate the assistant. At launch, the phone will come with a slew of Bixby-enabled applications pre-installed. More will be added over time.

Samsung also makes it clear that we should expect to see Bixby all over the place, not just its next-gen flagship smartphones. Which means future Samsung TVs, refrigerators, washing machines or air conditioners will soon come equipped with the AI-driven assistant.

[Samsung]