In an interview with Reuters Monday (Jan. 5), the firm’s new co-CEO said this move would give the company an edge over its rivals.
Samsung had as of last year included artificial intelligence (AI) features backed by Google’s Gemini on about 400 million smartphones and tablets. Now, the company is aiming to raise that number to 800 million this year.
“We will apply AI to all products, all functions, and all services as quickly as possible,” T.M. Roh told Reuters, giving his first interview since taking on the co-chief executive role in November.
The report notes that this plan could provide a major boost to Google’s Android mobile platform as the tech giant competes with the likes of OpenAI to attract consumers to its AI model. For its part, Samsung is hoping to reclaim its top spot in the smartphone market from Apple, while also dealing with competitors from China in the wider electronics space.
Google debuted its newest version of Gemini in November, leading OpenAI to step up its efforts in developing its next AI model.
Advertisement: Scroll to Continue
Roh told Reuters he expects the adoption of AI to accelerate, as Samsung’s surveys on awareness of its Galaxy AI brand climbed to a level of 80% from about 30% in a single year.
“Even though the AI technology might seem a bit doubtful right now, within six months to a year, these technologies will become more widespread,” Roh said.
The executive added that while search is the most used AI feature on phones, consumers also frequently deploy a range of generative AI editing and productivity tools for images and others, along with translation and summary functions.
In related news, PYMNTS wrote Monday about Google’s role in redesigning shopping around the rise of artificial intelligence.
A recent report from Google Cloud argued that retail has entered a new stage of agentic adoption. The report, based on an interview with Kapil Dabi, Google Cloud’s market lead for retail and consumer industries in the Americas, described agentic AI as technology that can reason, understand context and take action in ways similar to human decision-making.
“For retailers, this shift allows AI to interpret nuanced requests, such as visual style or situational needs, rather than relying on keywords or predefined rules,” PYMNTS wrote. “Google positions this evolution as foundational to improving discovery, personalization and engagement across increasingly complex shopping journeys.”
For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.