Samsung recently announced that it will be bringing new updates to its Bixby assistant, which the company says will improve user experience, as well as the performance and capabilities of the intelligent assistant for its smart devices.
The new features will be included in an update that arrives this February for Samsung’s Galaxy smart devices and other compatible hardware products.
The new updates include improvements for Bixby’s ability with language recognition and other features geared towards convenience. A statement from YoungJip Kim, Executive Vice President and Head of Artificial Intelligence Team in Mobile eXperience Business, Samsung Electronics:
“When Samsung first launched Bixby as a voice assistant, it was part of a vision to create a human-to-machine interface that makes life easier and can advance over time with Samsung Galaxy innovation. Today, we introduce updates to build a more intelligent interface that is proactive and adaptive, giving people greater control over their mobile experience.”
The new Bixby updates are designed with a focus towards voice commands and calling, allowing users to customize the way they can interact with speech and calling. Samsung has added Bixby Text Call in English, which will let English speakers can answer calls from anywhere by typing a message, which Bixby converts to audio and communicates to the caller directly on their behalf.
Thanks to the added Bixby Custom Voice Creator, users can also personalize their Bixby Text Call voice. With this feature, users can record different sentences for Bixby to analyze, allowing it to create an AI-generated copy of their voice and tone. It should be noted though that this feature is only currently available in Korea, although Samsung says that it’s planning to make it be compatible with other Samsung apps in addition to phone calls.
Bixby users can also customize their wake word, allowing the assistant to support changes to the Custom wake-up phrase. Additionally, Bixby can now better understand intent and process follow-up requests by understanding context and associating words previously used in interactions. Samsung has also expanded Bixby’s on-device AI support, which enables a user to run key commands offline.
This new announcement follows recent updates to Samsung’s other software services for its Galaxy range of smartphones and tablets – recently, the company also announced that its Camera Assistant app will be coming to flagship phones with One UI 5.1 installed on them. Originally unveiled alongside the Galaxy S22, the app will also be available for several phones including the Samsung Galaxy S20, Galaxy S21, the newest Galaxy S23 series, and foldable devices including the Galaxy Z Flip4 and Z Fold4. The feature will be compatible once a user has installed One UI 5.1 on their device, and comes with version number 1.1.00.4.
Additionally, the company also announced that several of its older flagship devices will also get the new iteration of One UI, which comes with some new features and optimisations in terms of software and performance. This includes last year’s Galaxy S22 series devices, Samsung foldable devices including the Galaxy Z Fold 4, Z Flip 4, the older S21 series, and the Galaxy S20 series.
