By Last year, Samsung acquired Viv Labs, an AI group who was said to be among the tops in the business. When we heard of Bixby — the forthcoming voice assistant to be used on the Galaxy S8 — we imagined Samsung would be using their technology to make it a strong competitor to Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa.
Instead, the Wall Street Journal reports that Samsung is simply using an upgraded version of their old S Voice platform.
We can’t be certain how impactful those upgrades will be. Samsung did do some independent hiring for AI engineers before acquiring Viv, so it very well could still provide a competent experience.
That leaves one big question, though: why the hell did they buy Viv? Either Samsung didn’t have enough time to fully incorporate the company’s technology into Bixby for the Galaxy S8’s launch, or they have far bigger plans than we previously thought.
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