Late last year Samsung acquired Viv, what we could comfortably call an Artificial Intelligence company. One of the company’s founders created Siri which Apple acquired in 2010.

The next flagship from Samsung, the Galaxy S8 which is coming soon, will come with its own Personal Assistant called Bixby which is based on Viv technology.

This is interesting news because:

Viv AI can do what most Personal assistants on the phone can’t do. Like answer layered questions. For example Viv CEO said the assistant could answer a question like, “Find me a flight to Dallas with a seat that Shaq could fit in.”
The Galaxy S8 is said to have a dedicated button for the Personal Assistant.

Most phones have been reduced to just 3 physical buttons nowadays. The Volume rockers and the power button. This very Samsung Galaxy S8 will do away with the Home button, as is rumoured. So why have an extra button for a Personal Assistant?

How good, and how useful and built in to the software is this Personal Assistant?

There’s already talk that Bixby will be able to allow users to send money to family and friends using voice commands. The Personal assistant will also be tightly integrated with the S8’s camera to enable text, image and object recognition.

Which is all good and great news. Does it warrant an extra physical button? People don’t use Siri or Hound as much. Neither did people use Google Now. But let’s wait and see how the S8 Bixby works.

Samsung wants to break away from the reliance on Google and have their own from a crowded field. May be this is the right way.

The speculated Galaxy S8 specs as at now are that it will have 6GB of RAM, a Snapdragon 835 SOC and an edgeless display.