Galaxy S8 to feature interactive voice recognition service

Samsung Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong met Viv Labs CEO Dag Kittlaus and executives at Samsung’s head office in Seoul on Friday, and discussed the future direction of AI technology, which will be applied to Samsung’s new “Galaxy S8.”

Samsung acquired the artificial intelligence (AI) platform startup last month.

CEO Kittlaus is the one who has developed “Siri,” a personal assistant service of Apple’s iPhone that works with natural language user interface. Having been scouted by the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Kittlaus had worked for Apple for four years before he left it with key developers in 2011 when he started his own company called Viv Labs. Afterward, he has developed a next generation open AI platform where independent service providers are allowed their free participation.

○ Samsung unveils future direction

The meeting’s attendees on Friday also included Viv Labs CTO Adam Cheyer and Lee In-jong, a vice president for Samsung's mobile business division. Starting with “Galaxy S8” to be unveiled early next year, the Korean tech giant has decided to make use of Viv Labs AI platform to its key products.

“Samsung needs to provide pleasure and convenience by using Viv Lab’s AI solution as it had produced synergy effect with 'LoopPay' and 'SmartThings,' which we have previously acquired,” Vice Chairman Lee said. “Samsung’s leadership in technology should be enhanced in the era of IoT (Internet of Things) by incorporating the newly-acquired solution into Samsung’s different products such as smartphone, electronics and semi-conductors.”

This is the first time that the Samsung vice chairman has openly announced Samsung’s business discussion with the executive of its acquired companies. The financial sector sees that Lee who had long been known for his “seclusive business style” has now begun to come to the fore of the business, revealing his business style since he was appointed as a registered director last month.

○　The world as we say it should be

At a following press conference on Friday afternoon, the executives of Viv Labs suggested the big picture of AI platform by saying, “Unlike in the past where humans tried to fit for devices, it’s the device that should fit for humans. The first step would be to create AI-centered open ecosystem where outside developers can freely participate in the development process in order to create the service, which thinks and communicates in ways that humans do.”

For instance, an order for pizza and coffee on smartphone can only be made after an application of relevant business is downloaded and installed. Viv Labs' platform saves this process, allowing verbal order into the “AI assistance” embedded in the smartphone. The business that offers food delivery service provides the ordered service on the platform. As there are more external service developers participating on the platform, there would be more services done by AI assistance.

Say “Order a pepperoni pizza” to refrigerator or TV as well as smartphone, then the AI-assistance would take care of everything. On the day, Viv Labs explained the reason they have rejected business offers from countless number of contents providers and decided to hold hands with Samsung is that Samsung is the world’s largest electronics with complete lineups of home appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines and TVs.

Having provided smartphone speech recognition services such as “S Voice,” Samsung has been active in investing interactive voice recognition over the past three to four years. “We have accumulated great amount of users’ voice data to the extent that human-level accuracy was achieved," Vice Chairman Lee said. "Now, we are trying to bring it to the next level where the context of complex conversation can be understood in different languages."

Ji-Hyun Kim jhk85@donga.com