Samsung Galaxy S8 To Come With An AI Assistant Service

Samsung Electronics announced Sunday that it will include an artificial intelligence assistance service in its upcoming Galaxy S8 smartphones. In addition to the Galaxy smartphone, the virtual assistance will also be incorporated into other products, including home appliances and wearable technology devices, according to media reports.

"Our Galaxy smartphones don't provide services that enable consumers to order pizza or coffee, but does provide third party applications. But the new AI platform will enable consumers to do things that they would usually do through a separate third party application," Samsung reportedly said in a statement.

Samsung, which plans to launch the Galaxy S8 early next year, recently announced the acquisition of the San Jose, California-based AI company Viv Labs, which was founded by the creators of Apple’s Siri service. In a statement released at the time, Samsung said that the deal would allow it to "unlock and offer new service experiences for its customers."

"Viv as an ideal candidate to integrate with Samsung home appliances, wearables and more, as the paradigm of how we interact with technology shifts to intelligent interfaces and voice control," Samsung's Executive Vice President Injong Rhee said in the statement.

According to Reuters, Samsung plans to integrate Viv Labs' AI platform into its Galaxy smartphones — a feature that would allow third-party developers to offer their services through the virtual assistant.

"Developers can attach and upload services to our agent," Rhee said during a press briefing Sunday. "Even if Samsung doesn't do anything on its own, the more services that get attached the smarter this agent will get, learn more new services and provide them to end-users with ease."

Samsung is banking on the sales of Galaxy S8 to recover the ground it has lost over the past few months as a result of the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. Last month, after announcing that it was permanently halting the production of the Note 7 smartphones, Samsung reported a 17 percent drop in its third-quarter profits.

In total, the demise of the flagship smartphone is likely to cost the company over $5 billion.