Samsung’s Bixby doesn’t come close to Siri or Alexa
So far, this new digital assistant isn’t that much of a help
NEW YORK
Things are starting out miserably for Bixby.
Samsung ’s upstart artificial intelligence digital assistant got an “incomplete” grade when it first turned up on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones that launched in March. The reason is that the voice-based commands that promise to make Bixby behave more like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant were delayed, at least in the U.S. (Bixby Voice is fully operational in South Korea, where Samsung is based.)
Now the Korea Herald is reporting further delays to the English-speaking version of Bixby, apparently because Samsung can’t amass the “big data” required for a good enough deeplearning-based experience.
I believe it. While Samsung recently granted early access to select S8 and S8+ users who expressed interest in trying out Bixby Voice, me among them, I’m being kind to suggest that Bixby has a lot of catching up to do compared to its rivals.
I’d have expected Bixby to be somewhat further along if only because Samsung bought Viv Labs last fall, an AI-start-up which had been co-founded by the human brains behind Siri. But Viv doesn’t seem to have lent much of a helpful voice to Bixby.
Or as Edison Investment Research analyst Richard Windsor notes: “Viv seems to be inexplicably gathering dust on a shelf until Bixby is ready for the two to be put together.”
Samsung has major ambitions for Bixby. Even with the latest apparent delay, The Wall Street
Journal is reporting that Samsung is developing a voice-activated Bixby speaker that will eventually pit it against the likes of Amazon’s Echo speakers and Google’s Home. Samsung declined to comment on the report.
In its current incarnation, Bixby Voice is mostly about delivering on vocal shortcuts to tasks and functions on the Galaxy phones itself, rather than being any good at answering basic questions.
On the S8+, Bixby did OK responding to some of my commands. When I asked Bixby to “Call Eli on the speakerphone,” the assistant found the correct contact, turned on the speakerphone and dialed his number. But when I asked, “How tall is the Eiffel Tower?” Bixby served up a screen giving me three weird choices to tap on, “change to Korean,” “Bixbyphone_103.BixbyVoice_1510,” or “Write it down.” Bixby was similarly baffled when I asked, “Who is Clayton Kershaw?” Bixby thought I was looking for a contact and said it couldn’t find one, instead of showing me information about the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher.