All Samsung Electronics white goods and electronics will be powered by voice-activated assistant Bixby by 2020. The electronics behemoth will spend $22 billion for the intelligence campaign.

"Bixby is not a specific product. It is the only AI platform that can be used in various products. We will develop the voice assistant into an intelligence platform to realize compatibility between all devices,” said Samsung Electronics Vice President Chung Eui-suk, adding “We will invest $22 billion by 2020 to sophisticate Bixby and develop IoT applications.”

Chung, who leads the project, laid out the vision during Bixby Developer Day held in COEX, Seoul.

Under the vision, Samsung will allow third-party app developers to plug into Bixby, and hardware companies to be able to build the voice assistant into their products.

“We have seen some progress after we announced the plan to develop Bixby into an intelligence platform last year. We are going to convert it into an open platform this month,” he said, emphasizing that “Bixby will transform from a simple mobile voice assistant to a scalable AI platform to connect various devices and IoT services.”

During the event, Samsung Electronics unveiled Bixby Developer Studio, a software development kit, to support developers.

By Lee sun-hee and Minu Kim

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]