Samsung Galaxy S8 Set To Get An AI Virtual Assistant

Samsung is planning to launch a virtual assistant to rival the likes of Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana in its upcoming Galaxy S8 smartphone.

The company officially confirmed that an virtual assistant built on technology Samsung acquired through the acquisition of Viv Labs, the company effectively behind the creation of Siri, will make its debut on the Korean company’s next flagship smartphone.

“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,” Samsung’s executive vice President Rhee Injong  is quoted by Reuters as saying.

Samsung’s Siri

Unlike major rival Apple, Samsung has yet to roll out a virtual assistant of its own creation even though Siri has been available on iPhones and iPads since 2011. That could be down to Samsung having access to Google Now, a form of virtual assistant and tailored information at-a-glance service that has been baked-in recent versions of the Android operating system.

However Google recently debuted its artificial intelligence (AI) powered Assistant, that offers a greater level or interaction and pseudo intelligence than the likes of Siri, but is officially limiting it to its Pixel smartphones for the time being.

As such, for Samsung to stay competitive with the latest Android smartphones, as well as take on Apple with is now smarter Siri, the Korean tech giant arguably needs to offer its own virtual assistant.

Given the as-yet-unnamed virtual assistant will be based on Viv’s technology, which has demonstrated more advanced artificial learning features than its previous work on Siri, Samsung’s take can be expected to tailor its services and responses to queries that suit the user based on their activities and habits learnt through smartphone use. In effect, Samsung’s virtual assistant will be more akin to the Google Assistant than Siri.

Given the catastrophic failure of Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy Note 7 with its fiery battery problems, the company will be looking to do what it takes to make the Galaxy S8 a success.

Smarter, AI-based virtual assistants appear to be the current technology du-jour, with the likes of Facebook and is M social media assistant looking to mix smart software with human backup to ensure it provides accurate and genuinely useful services.

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