Bixby’s Difficulty Understanding English Grammar & Syntax Delays U.S. Launch Of Samsung Voice Assistant

Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home standalone speakers are already being used by consumers, while Apple’s standalone Siri speaker reportedly will be announced on Monday at the WWDC. However, one laggard voice assistant is Samsung’s Bixby which is delayed. Although Bixby was supposed to launch together with the Samsung Galaxy S8, U.S. owners of the device would need to wait for a few more weeks.

Tech Crunch reports that the launch of the English-language version of Bixby will likely reach Samsung phone users in the United States by late June. Because the developers of the voice assistant are South Koreans, it may explain why Bixby is reportedly struggling to understand English syntax and grammar. However, Samsung may try to make up for that shortcoming by making available text entry and computer vision modes of analysis that are camera-based. But its South Korea version is already available in the area.

Samsung has been tentative about the release date of Bixby. In April, the Seoul-based tech giant said the voice assistant will roll out in later spring. The Verge reports that the voice assistant, one of the flagship features of the Samsung Galaxy S8 will launch, at the earliest, on June 21. Tech experts are not too excited about Bixby because they do not see a significant improvement from other voice assistants in the market.

However, it is ironic that the Galaxy S8 has a dedicated button to the launch of Bixby. But when it is clicked, the button will only pull up a Bixby app to whet the interest of the phone owner. The Galaxy S8 actually has a Bixby Vision feature which taps into the flagship’s camera to identify and recognize objects. It can also check prices on Amazon as well as set reminders and make available the phone owner’s schedule at a glance.