Samsung officially unveils its Bixby AI ahead of the Galaxy S8 release

Samsung officially unveils its Bixby AI ahead of the Galaxy S8 release

Samsung is due to launch its Galaxy S8 on March 29 and it will come with a series of Bixby-enabled, preinstalled apps

We're a little over a week away from the launch of Samsung's next-generation, flagship handset, the Galaxy S8. Typically announced at Mobile World Congress, the phone's release was pushed back following the furore surrounding the firm's 'exploding' Note 7 devices.

Samsung's Galaxy S8 is set to be unveiled on March 29

While there have been countless leaks, claiming to show renders of the Galaxy S8, Samsung is yet to confirm hardware features. It has, however, released details about software on the handset, a voice-powered, AI assistant called Bixby.

"Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but as the capabilities of machines such as smartphones, PCs, home appliances and IoT devices become more diverse, the interfaces on these devices are becoming too complicated for users to take advantage of these many functions conveniently," said InJong Rhee, executive vice president, head of R&D software and services at Samsung. "Samsung has a conceptually new philosophy to target this problem: instead of humans learning how a machine interacts with the world, it is the machine that needs to learn and adapt to us."

Rhee continued that Bixby is "fundamentally different" from other voice assistants and offers a more "in-depth" experience due to "completeness, context awareness, and cognitive tolerance".

For example, once an app is compatible with Bixby, you will be able to use your voice to control and manage "almost every task" that particular app is capable of, and which are typically controlled using touch commands. Samsung makes the point that most existing AI assistants support a limited number of selected tasks for each application. "The completeness property of Bixby will simplify user education on the capability of the agent, making the behaviours of the agent much more predictable," Rhee said.

Secondly, Samsung claims that when using a Bixby-enabled app, you will be able to use Bixby at any time and it will understand the current context. This means a mixture of voice and touch can be used easily. "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," said Rhee.

Thirdly, as the number of voice commands increases on assistants and other software, it presents a "cognitive challenge," for users, according to Samsung. Services like Google's Assistant, Siri, as well as the voice controls on Amazon's Echo and the Xbox mean you have to say a trigger word and use specific commands to complete specific tasks. Bixby will reportedly be smart enough to understand commands with incomplete information and "execute the commanded task to the best of its knowledge". It will also prompt users to give more information and break tasks down to make them easier to manage.

Within the post, Samsung hinted that its upcoming Galaxy S8 will come with Bixby pre-installed, similar to how Google loads its Assistant on its Pixel devices. This will come in the form of a "dedicated Bixby button" located on the side of Samsung's next device.

"Confusion around activating a voice interface is a barrier we have removed to make it feel easier and more comfortable to give commands," Samsung continued. For example, instead of turning on and unlocking the phone, looking for the phone application, clicking on the contact bar to search for a person and making a call, Samsung said all of this will be possible with a push of the Bixby button and a simple command.

This makes Bixby sound grander than it possibly is because you can already do this with Siri, for example, by pressing and holding the home button on an iPhone and asking Siri to make a call.

"There has been a lot of excitement and speculation about what we will deliver with the launch of the Galaxy S8 later this month, especially due to the advancements in artificial intelligence," Rhee continued. "We do have a bold vision of revolutionising the human-to-machine interface, but that vision won’t be realised overnight. Ambition takes time [and] Bixby will be our first step on a journey to completely open up new ways of interacting with your phone."

Samsung is due to launch its Galaxy S8 on March 29 and it will come with a series of Bixby-enabled, preinstalled apps. Samsung said this range will expand over time and it plans to eventually release a tool (in SDK) so third-party developers can add support for Bixby in their applications and services.

Beyond that, Bixby will be rolled out to Samsung TVs, fridges and other smart appliances.