Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
LG, Samsung upgrading AI voice assistants
Seen are LG Electronics' home appliances equipped with the firm's upgraded AI assistant ThinQ. Courtesy of LG Electronics
By Baek Byung-yeul
By Baek Byung-yeul
Samsung and LG have been upgrading their artificial intelligence (AI) assistants to offer more convenient services to customers who use refrigerators, washing machines, air purifiers and other home appliances, company officials said Thursday.
Since Samsung and LG launched their AI assistants Bixby and ThinQ in 2017, they have been spending hundreds of billions of won strengthening their AI platforms to attract a growing number of consumers at home and abroad, who embrace “smart” household appliances.
LG said Thursday it will introduce home appliances equipped with the new ThinQ AI assistant at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show, scheduled to be held in Las Vegas from Jan. 8 to 11.
Since LG introduced the ThinQ AI platform in December 2017, it has applied its voice assistant to its home appliances such as smartphones, air conditioners, washers, TVs and robot vacuum cleaners.
LG explained the new version of ThinQ will offer smarter user experiences to its customers. While the previous version played a role to conduct functions ordered by users, the new version has become more active as products equipped with the new ThinQ tells its users when to replace parts like filters in air purifiers to help maintain the best quality.
For consumers who don't want to read manuals to learn about the new features of LG's home appliances, the new ThinQ also instructs users how to operate the home appliances by voice or text messages. When problems occur, the voice assistant tells customers how to fix the issues via text messages or voice.
“We will continue to develop the ThinQ platform to offer a better experience to our customers,” Park Il-pyung, chief technology officer of LG, said.
Yi Ji-soo, Samsung Electronics' vice president of AI strategy, speaks about the firm's Bixby AI assistant during the Bixby Developer Day conference at the InterContinental Seoul Coex hotel, Nov. 20. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics
Samsung is also trying to enable more users to experience the latest version of its Bixby voice assistant.
Though the firm unveiled the new Bixby assistant in August, it was only available for the firm's premium smartphone Galaxy Note 9. However, it will expand the coverage of the latest system to Galaxy phones released before the Note 9.
The new Bixby will be available for the Galaxy S9, S8 and Note 8 smartphones and the updated version will be installed with an update of the operating system. For the global market, the update will start at the end of December and local consumers are expected to have the new version starting January.
To attract more users in the world, Samsung said more languages ― British English, German, French, Spanish and Italian ― will be available in the new Bixby. For the Galaxy Note 9 users, Samsung recently launched a test run of those languages.
Samsung said the new Bixby better understands the context of what users are talking about and becomes more interactive as it recommends things based on users' individual preferences. The firm is planning to create an ecosystem based around Bixby. To that end, Samsung launched the Bixby Developer Studio software toolkit for third-party developers in November.