Samsung looking to collaborate with Google for enhancing Bixby's AI capabilities

Samsung's Bixby hasn't really managed to stand up to other voice assistants such as Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, or Amazon Alexa and most of the time, owners of Samsung Galaxy flagships look for ways to either disable Bixby or remap the dedicated Bixby button to something else. Samsung probably realizes that it needs to do more work on Bixby but instead of going back to the drawing board, the company is turning to Google for help.

When asked about the possibility of incorporating Google Assistant into its home appliances, Samsung CEO Kim Hyun-suk said,

Samsung is developing its own voice assistant, Bixby, but we could consider various (forms) of collaboration with Google in the field. For example, we would call up Bixby, but it could lead us to one of Google’s services, like Google Map."

Samsung hopes to leverage its dominance in device sales as bargaining power to negotiate terms with Google. Hyun-suk said,

Each company has areas they particularly excel in, and collaboration is essential for perfect voice control. Samsung is a company that sells around 500 million units of devices worldwide every year, and we can use this as our bargaining power to negotiate the level of cooperation with AI leaders like Google. However, what’s important here is to have the AI platform -- which I will call the brain -- regardless of hardware type.”

Hyun-suk is confident of Samsung's ability to create any kind of hardware product and feels current leaders in AI can make AI speakers at best. Samsung is not abandoning Bixby anytime soon, though. If any, this should help Bixby gain some traction among Galaxy owners and hopefully, increase its capabilities and adoption.

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