Bixby voice service available in over 200 countries

By Kang Seung-woo

NEW YORK — Samsung Electronics’ Bixby voice assistant has reached more than 200 countries, the company said, Tuesday. Samsung said the service, available in Korean and English, provides millions of consumers with opportunities to experience a smarter way to interact with their smartphones.

Those countries include the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and South Africa.

Samsung began supporting the Korean language in May and the long-awaited English-language version of the intelligent interface became available in July.

“Now millions of customers worldwide have access to a new and intelligent way of interacting with their phone,” said Rhee In-jong, head of Samsung’s R&D for software and services.

“The expansion of Bixby’s voice capabilities is an initial step in the continued rollout of Bixby functionality. In the future, Bixby will have the learning power to offer more intelligent and personalized interactions and seamless connections across more devices.”

The expansion came as Samsung is scheduled to unveil its Galaxy Note 8 smartphone, which is expected to include Bixby.

Samsung debuted the artificial intelligence service aboard the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus in March with much expectation that it will be a strong competitor to Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa.

According to Samsung, the voice-activated digital assistant has enhanced smartphone productivity and personalization through “Quick Commands.” It refers to a feature that allows a user to easily create a custom voice command to use in place of a sequence of one or more commands.

“For example, you can use the command ‘good night’ as a shortcut for ‘turn on the do-not-disturb mode, set an alarm for 6 a.m. and turn on the blue light filter,’” a Samsung official said.

Samsung plans to continue expanding Bixby’s voice capabilities for additional countries, languages, devices, features and third-party applications. By further enhancing its mobile experience and solutions offerings, the firm expects that even more users can interact with their device and manage their apps and services more seamlessly and instinctively.

Voice capabilities for Bixby can be activated by pushing a dedicated button on the side of the phone or by simply saying “Hi, Bixby.”

Meanwhile, the number of users of the Korean-language version has surpassed 1.3 million, with the voice assistant executing 250 million commands, Samsung said.