After months of speculation that its new mobile assistant would be called Bixby, Samsung has now confirmed that Bixby is indeed the name of the assistant, which the company says is “fundamentally different” from the myriad voice-powered assistants already out there, according to a press release. Samsung says Bixby differs from the competition in that it will be able to support “almost” every task the app is capable of through through the touchscreen. This move does make sense, given that it can be confusing to figure out which commands are voice-enabled, though the fact that Samsung says Bixby will support “almost” every command suggests there may still be some confusion.
At any rate, Samsung says Bixby-enabled apps will be more context aware so that they understand exactly what the user is trying to do and will also be able to understand and execute a user-actioned voice command even if the speaker doesn’t use the full command form with the words in the right order. In fact, Bixby may even “prompt users to provide more information” when required. Samsung calls this “cognitive tolerance.”
“Since Bixby will be implemented in the cloud, as long as a device has an internet connection and simple circuitry to receive voice inputs, it will be able to connect with Bixby. As the Bixby ecosystem grows, we believe Bixby will evolve from a smartphone interface to an interface for your life.”