Bixby 2.0, the first major upgrade to Samsung’s artificial intelligence assistant that’s set to debut with the Galaxy Note 9 next month, will support third-party apps on the company’s next Android flagship. According to a new report from South Korea, all developers interested in creating mobile apps compatible with the new version of Bixby will be able to do so with full support from the Seoul-based technology giant as Samsung is said to be planning on launching an official Bixby SDK and API meant to facilitate the development of Bixby-enabled features in the coming weeks.
The integration is likely to work in two main ways, allowing users to either control third-party apps with voice commands directed at Bixby or have non-Samsung apps feed data to the assistant for the purposes of aggregation or other use cases. While no specific developer names have yet been mentioned in the context of supporting Samsung’s digital helper, many are likely to be eager to do so, with Samsung being by far the largest smartphone vendor on the planet and the dominant force in the Android segment that’s presently pushing Bixby to the entirety of its product portfolio, meaning the assistant will soon become available on hundreds of millions of devices around the world.
The AI helper’s expansion to third-party apps will also allow it to start competing with Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. Bixby has so far largely been aimed as an intuitive method of controlling one’s device but outside of Samsung’s app portfolio, it didn’t offer any kind of extra functionalities that could compare with the vast AI ecosystems Google and Amazon already managed to create and are still growing on a regular basis. While Bixby 2.0 is set to debut on the Galaxy Note 9, it should become available on other handsets from the company shortly after the launch of its latest Android flagship. The new version of the AI assistant will feature improved response times and a broad range of new capabilities, according to previous statements from Samsung‘s officials.