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Samsung Is Delaying the 'Voice' Part of Its New Bixby Voice Assistant (washingtonpost.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the delayed-until-further-notice dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Post: A much-touted feature of Samsung's next smartphones isn't going to work as advertised when the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ launch April 21. Samsung said it's delaying the launch of voice-command capabilities for its Bixby voice assistant in English, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Although some of its features will still work, the report said, Bixby -- Samsung's answer to Apple's Siri -- won't be able to respond to any user voice commands, perhaps until as late as May. The Korean-language version of Bixby will have all of its features at launch, the Journal report said. The reason this is a big deal is because Samsung has touted Bixby as a big new feature for the Galaxy S8. Not only is it baked into the software, but it features a dedicated Bixby button on the lefthand side of the phone. The new assistant is designed to "perform almost every task that the app normally supports using touch," according to PhoneDog. "It'll be able to understand the current context and the state of the app that you're in without interrupting the work that you're doing," and will be able to "understand commands with incomplete commands, meaning you don't have to remember the exact phrase that you have to say to perform a task with an assistant."

38 comments

  1. HULK MAD! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And Bill Bixby Dead!

    Gamma rays suck!

  2. Well... by SuperKendall · · Score: 0

    Burn the motherfucker down.

    They tried that, didn't work.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re: Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

      "Fuckin' A"

  3. already better than cortana, alexa, and siri by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    don't fuck it up, samsung, by enabling voice.

  4. Time to learn Korean? by MrCodswallop · · Score: 1

    I jest.

    1. Re:Time to learn Korean? by Nethemas+the+Great · · Score: 1

      Why couldn't they have turned Japanese on instead. I don't want to try learning another Asian language. Their learning curves seem to all start out with a 100ft vertical made of wet ice. At least I'm at the 80ft mark with Japanese...

      --
      Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
    2. Re:Time to learn Korean? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Asian languages are easy to start off. Grammar is very straightforward compared to European languages, you don't really conjugate verbs the way you do in Indo-European languages (Japanese has 5 conjugated forms, total, where French verbs have hundreds).

      Japanese gets difficult once you're learning the interplay of Chinese and Japanese, and the dozen different ways to read each Chinese character, but you can speak conversational Japanese fine without understanding how Chinese characters work in Japanese. Grammar is logical and pronunciation is easy.

    3. Re:Time to learn Korean? by markdavis · · Score: 1

      The closest thing the planet has to a "universal language", at least as far as first-world nations go, is English (and that is not saying that English is anything special- it is very descriptive and colorful, but certainly not one of the easier languages out there). I can understand them getting their native language (Korean) working first, but would expect the second would probably be English.

    4. Re:Time to learn Korean? by wisebabo · · Score: 1

      Uh, I think Korea's history with Japan precludes any possibility that Japanese would be the first (or second or even third) language available. After Korean, English and then probably Chinese they might work on Japanese but that would only be if it was a major market for their phones. I'm not sure but the same history might make Samsung products relatively unpopular in Japan.

    5. Re:Time to learn Korean? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not sure either but Japanese was a lot more useful to know in Korea than English is. They are quite close and interact a lot, even if they sometimes hate each other.

    6. Re:Time to learn Korean? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm 1st gen Korean-American. Although old people (my grand parent generation) can sometimes read and speak Japanese due to Japan annexation of Korea (source of Korean hate Japanese), most Korean can't speak Japanese. Many Korean, however, can speak Konglish (like Korean version of English) and understand some English because it's what they learn since elementary school.
      Since Japanese don't buy Samsung, I doubt Japanese will ever be supported by the Bixby.

  5. Re:Asian me too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...says apple to Xerox Palo Alto - nice GUI and Mouse - lets copy that....

    Steve Jobs admitted on Trump of the Nerds that they stole the GUI off Xerox..... but no.... lets pretend Apple don't steal all their shit
    bigger screens after Samsung went fuck you and built phones with bigger screens..

    Steve Jobs initially said their phone screen size was "perfect"

  6. But the device remains explosive by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    It is a Samsung device, after all.

    1. Re:But the device remains explosive by enrique556 · · Score: 1

      But it comes with a free frozen yoghurt, which I call Froghurt.

  7. Marketing vs Engineering by sit1963nz · · Score: 2

    Yet again, Marketing is promising things Engineering have not yet completed.

    This is not a new phenomenon .

    1. Re:Marketing vs Engineering by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      If you can read, you might want to consider parsing the words such that you understand the promised features to have been completed in Korean, with English localization expected to be finished in a month or two.

      tldr; completed is different than not completed

    2. Re:Marketing vs Engineering by sit1963nz · · Score: 1

      Until its there, its vapourware.

      English is a very difficult language , too many words sound the same, too many words have multiple meanings (The word "set" has 464 meanings), too many accents in addition to more localised slang (look up "Dench" and "Shit the bed" for the UK, "Stink" , "Munted" and "Jafa" from New Zealand).

      Google and Apple have been doing this (often badly) for years and still don't get it right (though Google is better than Siri (and I use Siri)). If they release it as soon as they say, it will either be a miracle or it will have so many short comings that it will be a joke.

      Different countries have different additions into the language, for example place names. Australians have Aboriginal names, NZ has Maori names, USA has the different Native American languages for place names as well as Spanish names.

      English is hard.

      I will stick to marketing promising things engineering has a not yet completed.

    3. Re:Marketing vs Engineering by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      My favorite word issue with Apple was when they introduced SCSI they wanted it to be pronounced "sexy" and for their effort they were rewarded with "scuzzy."

      Apple just tried too hard that time.

      English mixes numerous languages, that is the real reason why it is the common language.

      The thing about the voice processing features is that it doesn't really matter. If it can accurately differentiate the sounds used in the language, then even old-school search algorithms can find the repeating patterns in the sample data and convert those to an internal DSL. No problem. The algorithm isn't going to be taught the semantics of each language. It doesn't know Korean, it simply has an instantiation that was trained on a Korean dataset. This is the engineering department probably, but not actually an engineering problem. They just have to continue assembling training data until the results are deemed good enough.

  8. programmer optimism by jediborg · · Score: 2

    "SURE! we can spend months getting this voice recognition software to work perfectly with the Korean spoken language. If we need to support other languages like English all we'll have to do is import the new languages config settings, should only take a week or two!"

  9. Who cares by kamapuaa · · Score: 0

    This is a non-story. Nobody was going to use the Bixby assistant anyway.

    --
    Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
    1. Re:Who cares by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      The point of stories like this is that some people dislike Samsung, and want to wave their eToilets in the air and shout, "hA-Ha!" and feel superior.

      Others of us simply gaze lovingly at the nearest text terminal and smugly deride voice controls.

      Don't worry, you'll figure out this "slashdot stuff" once you've been here a few more years.

    2. Re:Who cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem with the Bixby assistant is that when he gets angry, he turns green and violent and grows to three times ordinary size.

      Don't make Bixby angry. You wouldn't like Bixby when he's angry!

      http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077031/?ref_=nv_sr_6

    3. Re:Who cares by sexconker · · Score: 0

      This guy gets it.

    4. Re:Who cares by sit1963nz · · Score: 1

      Try working with the blind and you will see how important voice controls are.
      Try working with the dyslexic and see how important voice controls are
      Try working with the intellectually handicapped and see how important voice controls are

    5. Re: Who cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or try working with that idiot in the office down the hall that won't give up his effing Blackberry.

    6. Re:Who cares by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      You can just say "accessibility," you don't have to drag people's medical information out.

      People who need special features from their technology should not be wasting their time worrying about a new model of phone having those features in Korea a month and a half before they have it in the US. That is just silly. They have real problems to focus on, like using the voice controls they already have.

      This story relates to technology fads, brand teams, and nationalism, it has nothing at all to do with accessibility.

  10. My guess is they under estimated dialects/accents. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My wife is from Japan and while she does well enough in NYC where we live, when we visit my family in Texas she has problems with some of the thicker drawls and a lot of the colloquialisms really throw her. It's noticeably worse in Houston than in Dallas. My guess is the engineers were working off "broadcast" English and after some field testing started scratching their heads and wondering what the hell is wrong with half of us :-)

  11. Re:My guess is they under estimated dialects/accen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Half?

  12. Re:Asian me too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is a pretty large gap you're jumping between Xerox and iPhone.

    Look, Apple CEOs have always been full of bullshit. I don't think anyone can deny that. But Samsung is a copypasta shop.

  13. rant: Samsung software is bad by enrique556 · · Score: 1

    I wish Samsung would stop polluting the delicate internet ecosystem with their bad software. It's bad in UI design, it's bad security-wise, and it's bad in intended purpose (wrest control from google). What's the bet this so-called "Bixby" (scoffs) has a frig-ton of security issues that siri and google assistant don't have? Samsung have demonstrated a lack of either skill or interest in writing secure software.
    The best phone I ever owned was a google nexus (admiteddly samsung hardware), simply because google did the software. The camera was better than all the phones I've had since, and all of the software on the phone actually made sense. Samsung's notes, calendar etc. are just bloody awful.
    Their system updates to their smart TVs turn the TV into a sluggish, unresponsive pile of crap.

    PLEASE Samsung just stick to making hardware as your programmers tend to suck the balls.

  14. Oh dear by DrXym · · Score: 2

    Samsung makes good hardware and then ruins it with firmware packed full of useless features and crapware. Frankly I doubt it matters if the S8 has a "dedicated button" or whether it responds to voice commands or not because nobody asked for the feature and very few are going to start using it whether it is there or not.

  15. No Bixby? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    DONNNNAAARRDD! I PERSONARRRAY put a BURRRET in you ASSHORE if NORK no getT BIXBY! YOU here me DONNNNARRRRDD?!

  16. Allow for the button to be remapped by iampiti · · Score: 1

    Regarless of the quality and success (I guess won't have much) they should really allow users to remap the button. That way it would be useful for everyone. Altough I wouldn't count on it since the trend lately seems to be not to let the user configure their devices much

    1. Re:Allow for the button to be remapped by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah right, this is samsung - these are the guys that build a self destruct chip into their phones if you try to root them and won't even allow you to remove nonsense apps from their phones. Samsung makes the iphone look like a flexible platform.

  17. Bixby, I'm on fire! by Aaden42 · · Score: 1

    "Bixby, can you please keep my phone from exploding in my pocket?"

    "I'm sorry, that's not implemented yet."