Samsung has announced that it will offer an artificial intelligence assistant service in the upcoming flagship smartphone while they seek recovery from its global smartphone recalls.
The Galaxy S8 will allow users to order food or perform other tasks without going through a third-party application but by simply asking the phone’s virtual assistant. The artificial intelligence service will also be made available in Samsung’s other consumer electronics products, such as refrigerators.
Samsung has joined the race to create the digital assistant service when it acquired in October Viv Labs Inc., a Silicon Valley startup launched by the same entrepreneurs who sold Siri to Apple. Past and current Samsung phones offer a voice assistant service called “S Voice” developed internally, but the feature did not gain much traction.
Samsung’s acquisition of the Silicon Valley firm was seen as its taking another step to seek independence from Google, which offers its brand of virtual assistant service in Android-powered devices.
Executives at Samsung and Viv Labs said that the biggest difference between the existing digital assistant and the one they are jointly developing is that the latter will be an “open AI platform,” meaning that third-party developers will be able to offer their services through Samsung’s AI platform.
