Bixby is one of those features on Samsung phones that are just there but it is underutilised. The company first introduced it back in 2017 with the Galaxy S8 and S8+, and it even had a dedicated button to turn on Bixby until the Galaxy S10 series in early 2019.
Ever since then, Bixby has stayed there, but it hasn’t received any major updates in recent memory, as if the company stopped caring about it. Regardless, we all expected that the new era of recent AI features might bode well for the voice assistant’s future, and it turns out that there is hope for it after all.
This news comes straight from TM Roh, the outgoing president of Samsung’s MX division, who stated in an interview with the media publication CNBC that a major AI upgrade to Bixby is on the way and is expected to be rolled out later this year.
The timing is quite significant, as this news comes almost a month after Apple integrated AI into its own in-house Siri voice assistant. So, this can be seen as an effort by Samsung to catch up with its biggest competitor in terms of the capability of its voice assistant.
Furthermore, TM Roh confirmed that the new AI upgrade of Bixby will not be based on ChatGPT or Gemini, but instead, it will be powered by Samsung’s own in-house LLM known as Samsung Gauss, which debuted last year. Hence, this will become a major test for Samsung’s in-house AI advancements in the real world.
Additionally, for users who wish to stick to Google’s alternatives, the same interview confirmed that Samsung will continue its strategy of allowing multiple assistants on its devices. Hence, Google’s Gemini will continue to co-exist with the new Bixby AI upgrade on Samsung’s devices.