Here’s How Samsung’s Bixby Compares to All Other Virtual Assistants
In a world where every smartphone seems to come with its own version of Siri, Samsung is finally ready to release its own fully featured AI-powered virtual assistant.
Samsung recently announced Bixby, a digital voice assistant that can get smarter depending on how much you interact with it. Bixby is built into the Galaxy S8 and not like Samsung’s current S-Voice that was built into previous models, but it was just a flawed version of Siri.
Before we start with how Bixby pairs with Siri and all other virtual assistants (like Google Assistant and Cortana), it’s important to note that Bixby is currently only available as a beta in the US and is only deployed to those who signed all the way up to the early access program. The full version of the software is reportedly being delayed due to “lack of resources.”
However, the beta version of Bixby is good enough to be compared to all other virtual assistants.
Bixby is activated by a button, not a phrase
To activate Siri and Google Assistant, you just need to say “Ok Google” or “Hey Siri”. But to activate Bixby, you’ll need to press the Bixby button (conveniently located on the side of the phone). Once you hit the button, you can ask the AI to do anything, including rotating a photo, playing a video, composing text, and setting up reminders.
Samsung said the voice assistant will be able to do 15,000 tasks after launch, but sending emails isn’t one of those. The assistant will compose it, but you will have to enter the address yourself. However, the highlight of Bixby’s inability to complete tasks is that, unlike Siri and Alexa, he doesn’t say, “I can’t help you with this.” Instead, Bixby says more helpful things, such as “Is this what you wanted?”
Bixby comes with augmented reality features
There are several ways to interact with Bixby on the new Samsung Galaxy S8, and one of them is with Vision. Bixby Vision uses a smartphone camera and augmented reality technology to identify objects in real time and search for them on the Internet. For example, if you walk into a store and take a photo of a book, Bixby will find prices, reviews, and other book recommendations.
Bixby Vision is also great for identifying landmarks, translating from foreign languages, and shopping for random items you see on the street. Compared to all other AI-powered virtual assistants, Google is the only one that has a similar camera function. Amazon has something similar with Amazon Firefly too.
Bixby has its own “social stream”
Samsung is replacing the Flipboard news feed with Bixby Home, but you can still get all the news in one place. Bixby Home acts as a hub for unified card reminders, social media updates, and current news. Think of it as an iPhone lock screen with all the widgets, but even smarter. Bixby can feed you new information depending on what tasks you usually do on your phone or what is most prominent on your calendar.
Learn from your to-do list and send you reminders
Right from Bixby Home, the virtual assistant can also feed you smart reminders so you can keep track of everything you need to do throughout the day. Reminders can range from anything like paying your rent to something small like watching a video you’ve bookmarked on YouTube. Unlike Siri, Bixby’s Reminders feature is slightly more robust as it is present in all native apps and continues to learn from what you type.