Samsung has had its fair share of troubles over the last few months thanks to the failed Note7 launch and subsequent massive recall. But the company is anxiously looking to the future, and wants to get users excited about its next device, the Galaxy S8. Late on Sunday, Samsung started building up hype for its upcoming handset, by announcing the Galaxy S8 will have its own virtual assistant, similar to Siri and Cortana.
Last month, the South Korean giant announced it was purchasing Viv, an AI start-up created by some of Siri’s original makers. We’ve covered Viv before, back at the start of the year, when a demo showed the new AI’s capabilities. Back then, its creators were touting some impressive performance and understanding on the part of the machine-learning algorithm. What was deemed to be even more impressive was that Viv is capable of building its own algorithms to accomplish tasks, a useful trick when dealing with varied user inputs and complex queries.
Now, Samsung seems to be very keen to put Viv to work and prove that the it has what it takes to takes on Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, all of which have digital assistants of their own. It’s not clear, whether Viv will retain its name, but Samsung did insist that the system will remain open to expansion by developers, which can plug their own services into the AI. Samsung VP, Rhee Injong explained:
Developers can attach and upload services to our agent. Even if Samsung doesn't do anything on its own, the more services that get attached the smarter this agent will get, learn more new services and provide them to end-users with ease.
Industry watchers believe the Galaxy S8, expected to be unveiled early next year, will need to be a very capable and impressive device is Samsung wants to regain the trust of its users. As such, the flagship handset is rumored to feature some heavy redesigns, a new type of camera, and a very powerful processor.
With Samsung now starting to officially relay information about the device, you can be sure we’ll learn more about it as we get nearer to the launch window.
Source: Reuters
19 Comments - Add comment