Be prepared to get sick of hearing about artificial intelligence or AI next year. It's going to be the theme of 2024. You've already seen both Samsung and Qualcomm talk about the AI capabilities of the Exynos 2400 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipsets that will be used for the Galaxy S24 series. Google's been talking about improved AI features for Android already and you can best believe that the next major Android OS upgrade will make a big deal about artificial intelligence.
Samsung is all-in on this trend as well. Even the new Galaxy Book 4 laptops the company unveiled today have been given a bit of AI seasoning as well. It goes without saying that upcoming iterations of the company's One UI software will be heavy on AI features as well. To be fair, with an ecosystem as big as Samsung's, there's great potential for AI to improve the user experience across the entire ecosystem.
However, as with most trends in the tech industry, you have the wait for the absurdity to sort itself out first before those few gems of substance can be uncovered. That will be the case with AI on smartphones as well. Some early features will likely not be remembered beyond their novelty value and others will be downright gimmicks. Within them, though, will be a few gems that will justify this AI-first approach that everyone seems to live by right now.
Google is having to play catchup in the AI race since Microsoft spotted value in OpenAI and ran away with it. Amid concerns that Microsoft's edge in AI might threaten Google's online search dominance, and genuine concerns over Google suffering from analysis paralysis and being too bureaucratic to come up with an answer, the Mountain View company finally seems to have got its stuff together.
The company recently unveiled Gemini, its new AI technology and the answer to ChatGPT's dominance, or so it hopes. Gemini is the foundational model upon which Google will build its next-generation AI services. “Pixie” is said to be one such service. It's reportedly an “AI assistant” that will be exclusive to Google's Pixel phones. It will utilize data from Maps, Gmail, and other Google products on your phone to provide a more personalized user experience. The Information reports that Pixie may evolve “into a far more personalized version of the Google Assistant.”
To be clear, Pixie won't replace Google Assistant, but may be a separate service that further elevates Assistant's capabilities. Since Pixie is slated to launch with Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro next year, it likely won't be Assistant with Bard, another AI-based service that Google has confirmed isn't exclusive to the Pixels. Assistant with Bard is expected to be available on the Galaxy S24 series as well.
So we can guess based on the process of elimination that Pixie is something entirely different. It could ultimately be a more advanced version of Assistant with Bard that remains exclusive to Google's Pixel smartphones, thus giving customers more reasons to buy Google's own phones.
The report also mentions that Google wants to bring this AI technology to its lower-end phones as well as wearable devices. Google clearly has a defined vision for Pixie and how it will eventually be made a permanent fixture across its entire mobile device lineup. As things stand, it doesn't seem like the company would be willing to open it up to other manufacturers.
Knowing Samsung's habit of building its own version of Google's services, I hope Pixie doesn't give it any stupid ideas of making a similar AI assistant exclusive to Galaxy phones. I'm not sure many of its users would appreciate another Samsung service, after having to live with a dedicated Samsung Email, Browser, Contacts, Text, etc and even its own app store on devices that must ship with Google's versions of those apps by default.
Let's not forget that Samsung tried to catchup with Siri and Google Assistant as they were forging ahead in the voice-enabled assistant game. Bixby has been divisive to say the least and many would agree that it's become a feature of redundancy since Samsung can't remove Google Assistant from its phones anyway.
The last thing we need is for Samsung to try and come up with an alternative to Pixie and have the effort fall flat on its face, as a lot of its users would expect, after their experiences with Bixby. Even if Samsung is sitting on an AI goldmine that can wipe the floor with Pixie, its implementation and functionality will really need to outshine Pixie to not be considered a waste of space by users. I'm talking real Jarvis from Iron Man type functionality, but nobody seems to be close to that right now anyway.
There are many other ways that Samsung can intelligently bring AI capabilities to its devices. Heck, it can even pump in as much AI as it wants into Bixby and hopefully turn it into something people might use, but let's avoid building something just because Google is building it.
