At a recent media preview in Seoul, South Korea, Samsung Electronics Co. showcased its latest Galaxy S24 smartphones, demonstrating its commitment to leading the smartphone market through innovation. On January 15, 2024, the world’s top smartphone manufacturer revealed its strategy to drive sales by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into its products, particularly focusing on enhancing its voice assistant, Bixby, with generative AI technology.
Revolutionizing Bixby with Generative AI
Introduced with the Galaxy S8 in 2017, Bixby provided users with various functionalities, such as live translations and restaurant recommendations. However, compared to the recent advancements in chatbot technology, Bixby has remained relatively basic, primarily facilitating straightforward question-and-answer interactions. The emergence of sophisticated AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT has significantly raised the bar for conversational interfaces, capable of generating complex textual, pictorial, and even video responses to user queries.
Broadening the Scope of Bixby
Bixby is embedded across Samsung’s range of products, from smartphones and smartwatches to home appliances, serving as a pivotal tool for device management within the Samsung ecosystem. Despite its extensive integration, Bixby’s functionality has yet to match the capabilities of advanced generative AI technologies like ChatGPT.
In a bid to elevate the user experience, Samsung has introduced a suite of AI-powered features in its latest S24 smartphone series. These innovations include a feature that allows users to search for information on Google by simply circling an item on their screen, streamlining the search process without the need to switch between apps.
Future Directions for Bixby
“Bixby has been a fundamental component of our ecosystem, not only in mobile devices but also in TVs and digital appliances,” said Won-joon Choi, Executive Vice President of Samsung’s mobile business, in a CNBC interview. With the rise of generative AI and large language model (LLM) technologies, Samsung recognizes the need to reimagine Bixby’s role. The goal is to equip Bixby with generative AI capabilities, making it smarter and enabling more natural interactions across Samsung’s product ecosystem. Although Choi did not specify a timeline for these updates, he emphasized Samsung’s commitment to this vision.
As Samsung focuses on enhancing Bixby with AI, the tech industry watches closely to see how competitors, particularly Apple, will respond with their AI innovations. Apple’s upcoming annual developer conference, WWDC, is highly anticipated, with expectations for significant AI feature announcements.
