Samsung announces Bixby 2.0 with support for TVs and refrigerators

Samsung has announced version 2.0 of its digital assistant Bixby. The new version should not only work on phones, but also on TVs and refrigerators from the South Korean manufacturer. It is unknown when the updated Bixby will be released.

An SDK will be released soon, which a limited number of developers will have access to, Samsung says. In any case, Smart TV models and the Family Hub refrigerator will receive support for Bixby. It is not yet known which models of TVs are involved and how the devices work with Bixby on smartphones.

Bixby 2.0 is the first version to use technology from Viv Labs, a company of the founders of Siri. Samsung acquired Viv Labs last year. Improving Viv Labs’ technology including Bixby’s speech recognition. Before the acquisition, the start-up worked on technology to recognize user speech based on patterns of words and sentences, rather than individual words.

Samsung promises to provide developers with ways to monetize developing services for Bixby, but it remains unclear how exactly that will work. It is unknown when Bixby 2.0 should be released.

Bixby is the digital assistant that Samsung first released on the Galaxy S8. To emphasize the importance of the assistant, there is a separate button on the housing of the S8 series and the Note 8 to call up the assistant. Samsung said from the start that it wanted Bixby to work on more devices than just smartphones.