Samsung is getting Siri-ous. The company officially announced its long-rumored virtual assistant will indeed be called Bixby – and it will come along with the upcoming launch of the new and improved Galaxy S8.
With this move, the South Korean heavyweight takes on fellow competitors like Apple, Google and Amazon and their own respective voice-enabled helpers in the face of Siri, Assistant (as well as Now), and Alexa.
According to Samsung, what Bixby will do better than competing virtual assistants is its ability to integrate with other applications, its refined context awareness and its heightened cognitive tolerance – the ability to understand users even when they provide the wrong command.
Here’s what the company had to say about the forthcoming release of Bixby:
We do have a bold vision of revolutionizing the human-to-machine interface, but that vision won’t be realized overnight. Ambition takes time.
Bixby will be our first step on a journey to completely open up new ways of interacting with your phone.
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While most apps won’t readily work with the new virtual assistant, Samsung has plans to release a dedicated software development kit to enable third-party app-makers to integrate Bixby with their apps. Samsung will call all apps that offer integration with the assistant ‘Bixby-enabled.’
Rumors that the manufacturer is working on its own voice-enabled virtual helper first began circulating when Samsung sort of accidentally confirmed Bixby on its website a few months back. Today’s announcement makes it official.
The South Korean phonemaker is expected reveal more details about its voice-enabled assistant next week at the Galaxy S8 launch event. Stay tuned for more updates.
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