Bixby: Samsung remains ambitious and wants to tickle Google Assistant

Samsung presented during its developer conference the different evolution lines for its Bixby voice assistant and for its platform dedicated to the connected home Smart Things.

Samsung do not let go with Bixby, his assistant connected. So much so that the Korean firm devoted a good deal of time to it during its Samsung Developer Conference (SDC).

Like Google assistant, Bixby should be able to better control the connected home with oral requests with Bixby Home Platform. Two major novelties were announced during his conference to the direction of the pros.

Privacy and development facilitated

Already, some of the requests made to Bixby will be processed directly locally by Samsung smartphones, bypassing Samsung’s servers. What to save time (35% on average of processing speed according to Samsung), but also to reinforce the confidentiality, one understands in subtext, a little like what Apple had presented for Siri at the time of the WWDC of last May and even Google for Assistant in its English version.

Another important announcement for the future of the voice assistant: Samsung offers a platform called Bixby Home Studio Developers. The idea was presented in broad outline, but from what we understand, Samsung wants to facilitate the development of applications that use and work with Bixby. Voice voice commands should also be better understood and better adapted to the context, thus avoiding triggering multiple devices at the same time. What to think that the brand wants to extend the ecosystem of its assistant launched in 2017, despite its still limited use.

Samsung and Matter

Last important point: Samsung announces joining a standard called Matter, which is supposed to ensure that connected home devices work properly together. In addition, the interest of Matter is clear for developers: to save time. By developing under this standard, they can be sure that their applications will work with major ecosystems. Google and Amazon, for example, already work under this standard.

The goal is clear: that in the long term, we will end up forgetting the technology that allows the connected home to function, that it disappears and operates in the background, while meeting all our slightest desires, such as knowing if there is enough to make a sandwich in the fridge.

If this desire to develop the connected home may be a bit scary in terms of privacy, Samsung has affirmed its desire to develop end-to-end encryption in the various uses of smartThings and the Samsung-style connected home.

These announcements do not make it possible to know concretely the future of Bixby, it still draws a fairly ambitious desire for the assistant and the IoT Samsungesque. It remains to be seen whether the brand will succeed in achieving its objectives. At the moment, that sounds a lot like a long-term view.