Samsung’s Bixby Voice feature looks set to be delayed even further, and likely due to language learning issues, according to a new report out of The Investor. The report credits an “industry source” for the information, who in turn stated that “linguistic capabilities” were too “unsatisfactory” at present. Specifically noting that Bixby Voice is currently not to a comparable level to the other artificial intelligence assistants that are already available – with Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri directly referenced by the industry source.
The issue here is not that Bixby Voice does not understand language, but seemingly, Samsung is having trouble getting the system to work with any language other than Korean. The functionality is understood to be working fine for Korean-speaking/listening users, but most notably, English and Chinese languages are proving to be problematic. A result not of the technology as such, but more of a ‘lack of resources’ needed to bring the functionality to non-Korean speaking users. In short, it seems there are a lack of foreign language specialists currently working on Bixby Voice.
While the report does look to confirm the delay of the rolling out of Bixby Voice in the US and China, the report does not provide any firm details on when it will actually become available, or how long it will be delayed for. So at present, there are no firm details on when Bixby Voice will be switched on in other regions. For background, Bixby Voice had originally been expected to arrive in markets (including the US) by the end of Spring – essentially, by now. However, by the end of May, the first reports had already started to come through suggesting that language difficulties were proving to be an issue. The point which is being echoed in this latest report. Interestingly, since then however, Samsung has opened up an Early Access program to offer some Bixby-enabled device owners the opportunity to be the first to use a US speaking and working Bixby. Although as to be expected, this is only a beta version of the service, and not one that is rolling out or even readily available to owners of the Galaxy S8 or the Galaxy S8 Plus.