Bixby
More info
- Creator
- Samsung (Viv Labs)
- Released
- Type
- Voice assistant
Samsung's voice assistant, launched in 2017 and built on technology from Viv Labs — founded by the same people who once created Siri.
When the Galaxy S8 arrived in spring 2017 it carried a dedicated side button for Bixby, Samsung's attempt to stop depending on Google on its own phones. The brains came from Viv Labs, started by Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer after they sold Siri to Apple; Samsung bought the company in 2016. Bixby was meant to drive both the phone and Samsung's other devices through voice and deep app integration.
The reception was lukewarm — the infamous button was easy to hit by accident and for a long time could not be remapped, and the assistant felt a step behind rivals at speech recognition and language understanding. Bixby lives on in Samsung's TVs, fridges and watches, but on phones Google has reclaimed the ground.