Samsung has acquired South Korean startup Fluently, which specializes in text-based conversational artificial intelligence, to strengthen Bixby. Launched in the United States back in 2015, the application is compatible with various third-party services, including Facebook Messenger, Telegram and WhatsApp.
It's unclear if Samsung is planning on pulling the Fluently application from the Play Store, so it can use the technology exclusively for Bixby—we'll have to wait and see. What we do know, however, is that Samsung Research, the firm's new dedicated AI center, was the driving force behind the acquisition.
There's no word on how much Samsung had to fork out, either.
The way Fluently works is simple: If you receive a messaging saying “Are you free for lunch today?,” for example, it recommends a set of AI-generated responses, like: “Sure, what do you fancy?” and “I'm down! I'll create a calendar event.” Replies, of course, vary depending on the dialect of the respective user.
Samsung is aggressively expanding its AI capabilities
“Samsung is now aggressively expanding its AI capabilities by taking over related manpower and organizations, as it views that the technology will be applied to all areas in the future,” said Lee Byung-tae, a Professor at KAIST College of Business in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday, November 28.
