Samsung’s Bixby personal assistant will soon be available in five new languages… well, four really.
At the company’s annual developers conference, Samsung said UK English is joining the default American English, while Spanish, Italian, French and German are also coming soon. Initially Samsung rolled out the assistant with Chinese and Korean, as well as supporting US English.
UK Samsung device owners will be glad to hear they no longer have to fake an American dialect in order for Bixby to fully understand their native tongue. During its SDC keynote, Samsung didn’t specify exactly when the langue rollout will take place, but said it will happen in the coming months.
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Elsewhere, the firm did reveal that the assistant would be opening up to all third-party developers, enabling them to create custom commands.
All add-ons created by devs within the new Bixby Developer Studio will be able to join the new Bixby Marketplace. Consumers will see them as “Bixby experiences” and will be able to use them just like Amazon’s Alexa Skills, the Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri.
Samsung says its platform differs because it will treat its developers like “first-class citizens” when compared to competing platforms. It called on the developers present to “do this together.”
The company believes we’re still in the early stages for voice assistants and pointed out there were 14 competing search engines when Google first came on the scene. It said it wants to do for voice assistants what Google did for search, and what Amazon did for online shopping. It believes its approach to embracing the developer community will ensure this vision becomes a reality.
Bixby may have endured a rough start, and remains unpopular with many Samsung users who’ve chosen to remap its dedicated button on new devices, but it appears Samsung is ready to push on here and make Bixby indispensable.
Do you think Samsung has an opportunity to catch up with assistants from Google, Apple and Amazon? Let us know @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
