MANILA, Philippines - Samsung Electronics has confirmed the introduction of Bixby, its own voice assistant and the rival of Apple's Siri, which is set to debut on Samsung Galaxy S8.
"The interface must be natural and intuitive enough to flatten the learning curve regardless of the number of functions being added. Samsung has employed artificial intelligence (AI), reinforcing deep learning concepts to the core of our user interface designs. Bixby is the ongoing result of this effort," InJong Rhee, Executive Vice President, Head of Samsung R&D, Software and Services said.
The new AI assistant, the star of the newest Samsung flagship smartphone, is touted as different from other voice agents or assistants in the market. Bixby promises to offer a deeper experience with these three properties:
1. Completeness
Bixby: When an application becomes Bixby-enabled, Bixby will be able to support almost every task that the application is capable of performing using the conventional interface (ie. touch commands).
Other AIs: Most existing agents currently support only a few selected tasks for an application and therefore confuse users about what works or what doesn’t work by voice command.
2. Context Awareness
Bixby: When using a Bixby-enabled application, users will be able to call upon Bixby at any time and it will understand the current context and state of the application and will allow users to carry out the current work-in-progress continuously. Bixby will allow users to weave various modes of interactions including touch or voice at any context of the application, whichever they feel is most comfortable and intuitive.
Other AIs: Most existing agents completely dictate the interaction modality and, when switching among the modes, may either start the entire task over again, losing all the work in progress, or simply not understand the user’s intention.
3. Cognitive Tolerance
Bixby: When the number of supported voice commands gets larger, most users are cognitively challenged to remember the exact form of the voice commands. Bixby will be smart enough to understand commands with incomplete information and execute the commanded task to the best of its knowledge, and then will prompt users to provide more information and take the execution of the task in piecemeal.
Other AIs: Most agents require users to state the exact commands in a set of fixed forms.
Samsung said there will be a dedicated Bixby button located on the side of Samsung Galaxy S8.
At the launch of the Galaxy S8, a subset of pre-installed applications will be Bixby-enabled.
The Korean giant added that newly unveiled artificial intelligence will be applied next to appliances like airconditioner or TV.
"Since Bixby will be implemented in the cloud, as long as a device has an internet connection and simple circuitry to receive voice inputs, it will be able to connect with Bixby," InJong Rhee added.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 will be unveiled at the 'Unpacked 2017' event in New York on March 29 and in the Philippines on March 30.
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| Samsung's upcoming premium device, the Galaxy S8 features voice assistant 'Bixby'. Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images |
The new AI assistant, the star of the newest Samsung flagship smartphone, is touted as different from other voice agents or assistants in the market. Bixby promises to offer a deeper experience with these three properties:
1. Completeness
Bixby: When an application becomes Bixby-enabled, Bixby will be able to support almost every task that the application is capable of performing using the conventional interface (ie. touch commands).
Other AIs: Most existing agents currently support only a few selected tasks for an application and therefore confuse users about what works or what doesn’t work by voice command.
2. Context Awareness
Bixby: When using a Bixby-enabled application, users will be able to call upon Bixby at any time and it will understand the current context and state of the application and will allow users to carry out the current work-in-progress continuously. Bixby will allow users to weave various modes of interactions including touch or voice at any context of the application, whichever they feel is most comfortable and intuitive.
Other AIs: Most existing agents completely dictate the interaction modality and, when switching among the modes, may either start the entire task over again, losing all the work in progress, or simply not understand the user’s intention.
3. Cognitive Tolerance
Bixby: When the number of supported voice commands gets larger, most users are cognitively challenged to remember the exact form of the voice commands. Bixby will be smart enough to understand commands with incomplete information and execute the commanded task to the best of its knowledge, and then will prompt users to provide more information and take the execution of the task in piecemeal.
Other AIs: Most agents require users to state the exact commands in a set of fixed forms.
Samsung said there will be a dedicated Bixby button located on the side of Samsung Galaxy S8.
At the launch of the Galaxy S8, a subset of pre-installed applications will be Bixby-enabled.
The Korean giant added that newly unveiled artificial intelligence will be applied next to appliances like airconditioner or TV.
"Since Bixby will be implemented in the cloud, as long as a device has an internet connection and simple circuitry to receive voice inputs, it will be able to connect with Bixby," InJong Rhee added.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 will be unveiled at the 'Unpacked 2017' event in New York on March 29 and in the Philippines on March 30.
