Bixby Has Learned To Speak English Well Enough For Mass Release

Bixby, according to the team at Samsung, is debugged and ready for mass introduction in the U.S.  Bixby has apparently learned to speak English — and Samsung has thus announced that its voice-activated digital assistant is ready to roll out on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ here in the states.

Bixby’s voice capabilities have been available in the U.S. before now — but only as part of a beta test meant to help up response times and teach Bixby better language comprehension skills. Users responded to that beta pretty notably — over 100 thousand users signed on to the early version of the program and collectively have given Bixby over 4 million commands.

And, as a nice add on, not only can you talk to Bixby — Bixby can talk back to you, reading your SMS messages and emails just by using the stock apps on a Samsung phone.

Bixby — like many of its other counterparts in the voice-activated AI race — can also set alarms, send texts, and the like.

Its real secret sauce, however, is in its ability to help users navigate their phones more easily and efficiently by allowing users to make complex compound commands that things like Google Assistant and Siri simply can’t follow. Samsung says that deep learning will also allow Bixby to improve over time as it begins to recognize users’ preferences and ways of speaking.

Users who want to use Bixby have two ways of getting to “him.”  They can hit the Bixby button — or they can wake him with the command “hi, Bixby.”