Samsung To Introduce New Bixby Features During Developers’ Conference

Samsung Electronics has revealed that it will be hosting a developers’ conference next month. The move is said to be the tech giant’s way of expanding the reach of its Bixby artificial-intelligence (AI) assistant.

Yonhap learned directly from Samsung Tuesday that the company’s conference, called the Samsung Bixby Developer Day, is scheduled to happen on Nov. 20 in Seoul, South Korea.

Samsung has two main goals for the event. First, it wants it to serve as the venue where it will disclose to invited developers and business partners its vision for the Bixby platform. Next, it wants to introduce the new features of its AI program during the conference.

Samsung’s major smartphones are already equipped with Bixby, but it’s clear that the company wants to bring it to more devices. The largest smartphone producer divulged earlier this year that it’s going to incorporate its AI technology to its home appliances by 2020, The Investor has learned.

The Bixby digital assistant was released alongside the Galaxy S8 early last year. At launch, the program was missing some of its promised features, including Bixby Voice. It took some time before Samsung managed to roll out the features, causing many to doubt the capabilities of Bixby.

Nevertheless, the tech giant did not back down from its desire of making Bixby a powerful and leading digital assistant. Samsung worked on a makeover for the AI assistant with Bixby 2.0. The updated ecosystem is more focused on integrating with Samsung’s IoT and connected products.

Samsung Bixby 2.0 is already publicly available, but it is only found on Galaxy Note 9 handsets to date. Samsung plans to make the updated software “open” by releasing an SDK and API later this year. But for now, the SDK is only accessible via a closed, invitation-only beta test, according to TechRepublic.

The CEO of Samsung’s mobile unit, DJ Koh, told CNBC last month that the tech giant will publicly release the SDK and API at an upcoming developer conference in San Francisco. Koh noted that the public release of the updates will enable the Bixby ecosystem to grow.

“Opening the ecosystem in November, then this baby (Bixby) will grow,” Koh said at the time. “So I do not want to see just six months or nine months performance, no. Because this is like a long journey; it’s just starting because with the new Bixby embedded in the Note 9, a new baby was born.”

Koh explained that Bixby will be able to grow and learn more when developers start creating apps that will utilize its technology and features.