Samsung's Bixby assistant said to be based on S Voice, not Viv Labs' technology

Samsung's upcoming AI-powered voice assistant Bixby was previously speculated to be built by Viv Labs, an AI specialist Samsung acquired last year. It was expected to debut with the Galaxy S8 and the S8 Plus, replacing S Voice and offering much better capabilities. However, if a new report from The Wall Street Journal is to be believed, Bixby is based on S Voice rather than on Viv Labs' AI technology.

The Wall Street Journal‘s report, citing people familiar with the matter, states that Bixby has been upgraded from S Voice by Samsung's engineers over the past few months. It will reportedly be able to “answer voiced questions from users,” and may come with a dedicated hardware button, as suggested earlier. If Bixby is to compete with Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple's Siri, it needs to be much better than the current version of S Voice.

What do you think about this report? Of course, you should take this information with a pinch of salt. However, if this turns out to be true, do you think Samsung's strategy of upgrading S Voice to Bixby rather than building it from ground up was a wise choice?

Asif Iqbal Shaik - Senior Editor

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First Samsung device: T100

Asif is a computer engineer turned technology journalist. He has been using Samsung phones since 2004, and his current smartphone is the Galaxy S21 Ultra. He loves headphones, mechanical keyboards, and PC hardware. When not writing about technology, he likes watching crime and science fiction movies and TV shows.

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