It seems Samsung is gearing up to unveil the 2.0 version of its virtual assistant, Bixby at company annual Developer Conference, which will take place in San Francisco. The conference is scheduled to take place on October 18.
According to a report by The Korea Herald, the company is planning to integrate Bixby with third-party services and devices other than smartphones. “We will supplement the incomplete parts of Bixby 1.0 at Bixby 2.0,” Koh Dong-jin, Samsung Mobile chief, was quoted as saying. “Outside developers will participate in the development of Bixby 2.0 although they could not for Bixby 1.0 due to time shortage,” he added.
The report further mentions that Samsung has recently appointed Samsung Research America’s vice chief Chung Eui-suk as the head of service intelligence group. The department is basically in charge of developing Bixby and other artificial intelligence services. The move is meant to enhance the performance of the virtual assistant, which has received a lackluster response so far.
To recall, Samsung introduced its latest virtual assistant, Bixby, with the launch of Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. The virtual assistant was recently made available globally with over 200 countries including India. It is basically Samsung’s answer to other virtual assistants in the market including Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana and Alexa.