Apparently, Bixby isn’t dead yet. A Samsung executive told CNBC that the company is “working hard” to equip its voice assistant with artificial intelligence capabilities, suggesting that the company views products like Gemini as competitors rather than alternatives.
It’s good to know that because some of us are starting to wonder. When Samsung announced a slew of new generative AI features for its flagship phones earlier this year, its voice assistant was barely mentioned. Samsung and Google have also heavily promoted the Galaxy S24 phone, which uses Gemini Nano, Google’s on-device artificial intelligence model. It wouldn’t be easy for Samsung to replace Bixby with a Google Gemini-powered assistant, but apparently, that’s not the plan.
“I think we have to redefine the role of Bixby so that Bixby can be equipped with generative artificial intelligence,” Won-joon Choi, executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile business, told CNBC, adding that it needs to be “smarter” and able to operate more naturally. Chat. It seems that Samsung is not the only technology company rushing to integrate artificial intelligence into its voice assistant – Apple is expected to announce an artificial intelligence-powered Siri at this year’s WWDC.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy S24’s AI features made their way to last year’s phone with the One UI 6.1 update. Galaxy AI (the name of the entire software package) is currently free. If Samsung does plan to charge for its AI capabilities in the future, it will have to offer more than it does now. Whatever that vision looks like, Bixby seems to be a part of it.