Samsung To Launch AI Digital Assistant Service For Galaxy S8 (reuters.com)

Samsung plans to launch an "artificial intelligence" digital assistant with its upcoming Galaxy S8 smartphone, it told Reuters. The announcement comes a month after the company acquired AI startup Viv, a voice assistant that aims to handle everyday tasks for you on its own. The company plans to incorporate this capability on its home appliances and wearable devices as well. From the report:Samsung is counting on the Galaxy S8 to help revive smartphone momentum after scrapping the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7, which will hit its profit by $5.4 billion over three quarters through the first quarter of 2017. Investors and analysts say the Galaxy S8 must be a strong device in order for Samsung to win back customers and revive earnings momentum. Samsung did not comment on what types of services would be offered through the AI assistant that will be launched on the Galaxy S8, which is expected to go on sale early next year. It said the AI assistant would allow customers to use third-party service seamlessly. "Developers can attach and upload services to our agent," said Samsung Executive Vice President Rhee Injong during a briefing, referring to its AI assistant. "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."

Comments

First AI question

[Virtucon]

"How do I stop my phone from catching fire Samsung?"

Re:First AI question

[tripleevenfall]

"Galexa, call the fire department and my insurance agent!"

Re:First AI question

[Maritz]

Oh, it's the guy who isn't bored by the joke yet.

Re:First AI question

[jellomizer]

It doesn't the AI will scream in pain and anguish when it is on fire.

Re:First AI question

[Virtucon]

at at same volume as the owner as it burns through your pocket? That's the feature I want to see.

How about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop fucking up Android with even more bloatware, and instead just TRY to updated devices these morons (aka "we") already paid for??

Re:How about...

[ColdWetDog]

Special this week for you! Aluminum foil bulk pack with handy Mylar backing. Also try out our new line of soft, all natural cotton backed foil products!

Comfort, Styling and Paranoia.

(This message brought to you from your Samsung AI)

Once more, Samsung misses the point

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Trying to get people to use yet another Samsung version of something that already exists in a very usable form that is NOT Samsung specific will not sell more phones. I use Google Now/Home, I have no interest in using a different personal assistant that doesn't adequately integrate with the services I already use. I'm not going to switch to Samsung versions of those services, I'll just switch to another Android brand once I need to upgrade my S6.

Re:Once more, Samsung misses the point

[Virtucon]

But Samsung wants to mine you just like Google and Apple do. That way they can provide targeted marketing opportunities and profiles to third parties. By using one service you're denying them their opportunity to mine you and that's antisocial.. ;-)

Re:Once more, Samsung misses the point

[alvinrod]

Samsung doesn't care about Android, they care about selling Samsung phones. They would rather make the money that Google is currently making from having all of those different services. There's very little profit to be made by being yet another hardware vendor, especially if you have to source components from the same suppliers as your competition. If Samsung didn't also have its own hardware division, they'd likely wind up just as unprofitable as their competitors.

They want people to start using those Samsung services and getting attached to them, so that they don't have as easy of a choice when it comes to upgrading and switching, because leaving Samsung means leaving your services. Google makes it easy to move between manufacturers with their services, but the manufacturers don't make any money as the race to the bottom continually sucks out the profit margin.

Re:Once more, Samsung misses the point

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Of course they do. I know full well Google does this, but here's the kicker. I Don't Care... because the services they provide have a value to me because they work well. Samsungs do not.

Re:Once more, Samsung misses the point

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

But they have failed with every one of the attempts they've made. S Voice: Useless. I understand their motivations, but that ship already sailed. People that are on Android and using those services are already using the Google versions of them. If they get a phone that, like the S5 did initially, tries to redirect them to an inferior service, they will return the phone and buy another brand.

Re:Once more, Samsung misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to read between the lines here.

There is a cold war going on between Samsung and Google.

The latest move from Google was the Pixel.

Google has, essentially, signalled that it intends to compete directly with other OEMs (read: Samsung) when they released the Google Pixel. Unlike the Nexus line, the Pixel is significant in that Google released specific Android features for the Pixel first, before making them available to other OEMs, and they've hinted that some features will not be released to OEMs at all in the future.

i.e., Google started building launch sites in Cuba.

However, Samsung isn't going to be caught napping. Samsung has been stockpiling "nukes" and getting ready for "war" too. Tizen, Samsung pay and now this, this stuff is Samsung's way of telling Google that, if it wants to, it can swap out Android components (or even Android itself) and use something else made in-house. Samsung is telling Google that it isn't afraid to press the big red button and, essentially, collapse the entire Android ecosystem.

Now, nobody wins by going to war. Right now, Google needs Samsung (the only profitable Android OEM, and the only one who can bring the fight to Apple) so they would lose big time if Samsung ran away from Android. Samsung is also not interested in swapping out Android because they'd have to build their own platform from scratch.

So what will happen is that Google will loosen the screws a little bit and Samsung will let it's digital assistant die a natural death. Samsung looks kinda foolish but they remain the top dog of the Android world, and that's what matters to them.

Re:Once more, Samsung misses the point

[thegarbz]

To be fail, Google Home/Now's integration into the rest of the system utterly sucks. It's great for finding out simple things like google seaches, but it's not a good technology to voice control a phone. If they can integrate it really well with their phone then we finally may be getting somewhere.

Re:Once more, Samsung misses the point

[JThundley]

The reason someone would use Samsung's assistant is because of vendor lock-in. People who buy Samsung phones will have this set as the default instead of Google Now. It was already like this on my company's Samsung phones we bought years ago. You'd hold the home button and it would ask if I wanted to complete the task with Google Now or S-Voice, which is a dumber voice-controlled assistant.

Dear Samsung:

[emil]

If you want to (re)attain market leadership in phone sales, then you must:

• - Unlock all of your bootloaders,
• - Implement removable batteries in all future designs,
• - Likewise include SD-Card slots,
• - Configure Knox alarms to be cleared when your stock firmware is reloaded with Odin.

If you do not do these things, then your days of market leadership are over, and they will not return.

Warmest regards from your user community.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[Maritz]

The first two, maybe even first three, are not something that the majority of users give a fuck about. That's a shame, probably, but I think it's true.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[ColdWetDog]

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad .....

Market leadership is not trying to impress the couple of thousand anti social, remarkably tech adverse, cheapskate paranoids around here.

Look at Apple and Google. Billions in the bank. Billions of Slashdot posts complaining about the locked down Evil Bit setting.

Neither Samsung, Apple or Google care one wit about bootloaders, batteries, SD cards or niche software. Get used to it.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[110010001000]

100% correct. I'm a geek but I don't even know what "Configure Knox alarms to be cleared when your stock firmware is reloaded with Odin." is.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[iampiti]

Sadly the only thing most people will care about will be about the SD card slot.
We live in times where our ability to do things with our computers (of any size, including smartphones) is being limited ...and that's enabled by the fact that most regular joes don't care.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[CODiNE]

At least we can agree that the fourth item is in hot demand. Nothing like a Knox and Odin discussion to get a blind date going.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[jeremyp]

That's not going to work. Most of the people buying smartphones really don't care about any of that. They aren't going to retain market leadership by appealing only to a part of the Slashdot readership.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[dmesg0]

I'm not a geek, but even I know what Knox and Odin/Heimdall are.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[Luthair]

I think most users would be interested in being able to swap batteries, at least if they still even offered them for sale at a reasonable price 2-3 years into the device. The others, including SD cards the majority of users won't care about.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[Rick Schumann]

Face it: Most people buying smartphones are about as technologically literate as your average politician, appointed official, or law enforcement officer. Why else do you think it is that they blink so much and have that confused look on their faces when you try to explain to them they're carrying around surveillance devices masquerading as a telephone? All they care about is playing their Candy Crush games and compulsively checking and posting on Facebook.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[mlts]

The bootloaders should be like Google Nexus or Pixel devices. Ship locked, but with a preference setting and a fastboot command, can be unlocked by a clued user. This way, I can install a ROM, relock the bootloader. If a bad guy steals my phone and unlocks the bootloader to try to bypass the ROM, the phone will have cleaned off the /data partition and reset.

Removable batteries are a nice thing. Beats bulky battery cases.

SD-Card slots are useful. Two would be nice, one for bolstering internal storage, and another SD card as a place for Titanium Backup to dump backups.

As for Knox E-fuses, there is a place for that, but they need to be resettable by the end user. It is the end user's phone, after all.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[thegarbz]

I'm impressed. I don't think anyone could come up with a list of things consumers could care any less about than the nonsense you posted. Market leadership doesn't come from any of the above. No one except a few people on XDA developers care about Knox alarms and bootloaders, very few people outside the Slashdot readership care about batteries, and every flagship device Samsung has in their lineup at the moment already has an SD card.

I'm glad you're not in their marketing department or they'd be bankrupt now.

Re:Dear Samsung:

[thegarbz]

I think most users would be interested in being able to swap batteries

You're very out of touch with reality. Far more people care about the SD card and the ability to record HD video without hitting very low storage limits than care about their battery. The battery debate is over, practically no one outside the slashdot or hardcore geek crowd cared about the battery, and really there's no reason to anymore. The typical phone will be damaged and replaced long before their battery expires thanks to the contracting systems we have in place, and when people are low on charge they'll reach for an off the shelf USB charger which they can also use to charge their many other devices or share among other people when a hard day of Pokemoning drains the battery.

"Hey Samsung Asistant, why is my phone melting?"

[JoeyRox]

Reply (in sexy female voice): "Because when you hold me you make me hot inside."

AI

[110010001000]

This isn't AI, or "smart". Neither is Siri, Cortana or whatever Google calls theirs. Voice recognition plus database lookups are not AI, and never will be.

Re:AI

[110010001000]

Understanding a query isn't AI. Is Eliza AI? no.

Re:Spooky Prediction

[Maritz]

Samsung seem to be the only ones who don't see that coming.

First message of the AI

[Thanatiel]

Self-destruct in 5 ... 4 ...

It's going to be great!

[Gravis Zero]

I've hear the Galaxy S8 is going to be so great it's going to explode on the scene. You'll be the envy of everyone who will want to call and talk about it so your phone certain to be blowing up. Sorry, I can't help myself, I'm on fire. ;)

Too late, Samsung

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a Pixel and I'll never own another of your shovelware garbage phones again.

Re: Al Assistant: My Vote ( Score: 1, Helpful )

[tripleevenfall]

TLDR

batteries

[emil]

• - Users certainly care about batteries at the end of the service life, and would rather not purchase a new phone because of the failure of a $10 component. The more expensive the phone, the more frustration when this point is reached.
• - Users also certainly care about photos or other media on a damaged phone, the extraction of which is greatly complicated by the lack of an SD-Card.

Re:batteries

[thegarbz]

Users certainly care about batteries at the end of the service life, and would rather not purchase a new phone because of the failure of a $10 component. The more expensive the phone, the more frustration when this point is reached.

No they don't. End of service life is just another term for I'm getting another phone for nothing just like I did my previous one because that's the way contracts work. I have yet to see a single person who's phone failed because of a $10 component that wasn't the result of something obviously bad like catching fire, or bulging and breaking the phone apart. Sales figures have very clearly shown that this doesn't even rank remotely in consumer interest.

Re:batteries

[GNious]

• - Users certainly care about batteries at the end of the service life, and would rather not purchase a new phone because of the failure of a $10 component. The more expensive the phone, the more frustration when this point is reached.

This is an issue that occurs well after the device is bought, and doesn't figure into the purchasing for the vast majority of people.

It's all about interoperability

[omnichad]

Google's is nice, but only because I use Google for my calendar and some email. What's the use case for Samsung?

Personal digital assistants will only have a limited use as long as there's no interconnected API. Right now, you can make your app respond via Google Now - but a whole world exists outside your phone. It needs to be as easy as OAuth to link up and register concepts/hooks.

Sure that will work.

[emil]

Technical reviews of Samsung phones are now of (yet another) walled-garden that is horribly tended due to the vendor neglect of Android.

If Samsung relents, and allows their remarkably poor-quality code to be wiped, then technical reviews immediately improve. With market opinion eventually come sales.

This also involves Samsung growing a backbone against Verizon. That will never happen, so the stock price will continue to tank. More explosions might accelerate the effect.

The hottest gadget of the season

[OneHundredAndTen]

Without any doubt, this is going to be the hottest gadget this quarter. After all, Samsung is on fire, and its products are the most explosive success ever.

Ringtone?

[meglon]

Apparently it comes with a ringtone from Springteen's "I'm On Fire."

curso NR 10

[Instituto Santa Cata]

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