It looks like generative AI, whether you like it or not, is here to stay, with big tech companies heavily pushing it into just about every nook and cranny of their product line-up.
Samsung has announced the Vision AI Companion, an "upgrade" to its long-running Bixby assistant that brings conversational AI to the household"s main screen. This comes months after the South Korean tech giant partnered with Microsoft to bring Copilot to select TVs and smart monitors.
The Vision AI Companion will be available across the company"s 2025 lineup, including its Neo QLED, OLED, The Frame Pro, Micro RGB televisions, and some of its Smart Monitors.
So, what can Vision AI Companion do? Since it is powered by LLMs, its capabilities go well beyond simple "play" or "pause" commands. You can ask complex questions about the show you are watching, like asking for a plot summary without spoilers. It can give you personalized recommendations for movies or even help you plan a trip by finding relevant videos and information.
For example, asking "What is the best way to grill pork belly?" will bring up a list of recipe videos directly on the screen. Other built-in functions include Live Translate for real-time translation of on-screen dialogue, an AI Gaming Mode that optimizes picture and sound settings for gameplay, and a feature that can generate custom wallpapers for your screen. It also handles automatic picture and audio calibration.
Other features include Live Translate for real-time dialogue translation, Generative Wallpaper to create custom backgrounds, and an AI Gaming Mode that optimizes picture and sound for gameplay. It also includes the usual suite of picture enhancements like AI Picture, AVA Pro, and AI Upscaling Pro to automatically adjust quality.
The system combines different large language models to provide answers, functioning as what Samsung calls a "multi-AI agent platform," powered by external AIs like Microsoft"s Copilot and Perplexity.
There is a dedicated AI button on the new remotes that gives you direct access to the Vision AI Companion. The platform is launching with support for 10 languages, including English, Korean, Spanish, French, German, and Italian.