Samsung says Bixby’s still not dead

Are you there, Bixby? | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Bixby’s not dormant yet, apparently. A Samsung enforcement tells CNBC that the institution is “working truthful hard” to equip its dependable adjunct with AI features, suggesting that the institution sees the likes of Gemini arsenic contention — not a replacement.

That’s bully to know, due to the fact that immoderate of america were starting to wonder. Earlier this year arsenic Samsung announced a boatload of caller generative AI features for its flagship phones, its dependable adjunct was scarcely mentioned. Samsung and Google besides made a large woody astir the Galaxy S24 phones utilizing Gemini Nano — Google’s on-device AI model. It wouldn’t person been a agelong to spot Samsung regenerate Bixby with Google’s Gemini-powered assistant, but apparently, that’s not the plan.

Samsung’s Won-joon Choi, enforcement vice president of mobile, said to CNBC, “I judge that we person to redefine the relation of the Bixby, truthful that Bixby could beryllium equipped with generative AI,” adding that it would request to beryllium “smarter” and capable to converse much naturally. As it stands, Samsung isn’t the lone tech institution scrambling to incorporated AI into its dependable adjunct — Apple is expected to denote an AI-ified Siri astatine this year’s WWDC.

In the meantime, the Galaxy S24’s AI features made their mode to past year’s phones by mode of a One UI 6.1 update. Galaxy AI, arsenic the full bundle is called, is escaped for now. If Samsung does program to charge for its AI features successful the future, it’ll person to connection a batch much than what it’s susceptible of now. Whatever that imaginativeness looks like, Bixby appears to beryllium portion of it.