Samsung’s Bixby is about to become a little outdated, as just six months after its initial release the company has announced Bixby 2.0. It seems that this is, in fact, a key step in Samsung’s long-term plans for a smart fridge powered by its digital assistant.

The original Bixby initially struggled to find its feet regarding Western languages, resulting in a severely late roll out that has in turn created a lack of widespread adoption for the assistant. Luckily, Samsung have fine-tuned Bixby 2.0 to have greater natural language capabilities and include the rapidly new standard of differentiating between individuals.

“Bixby 2.0 will be ubiquitous, available on any and all devices” acting as “a fundamental leap forward for digital assistants,” describes Samsung’s executive vice president, Eui-Suk Chung. “This means having the intelligence of Bixby, powered by the cloud, act as the control hub of your device ecosystem, including mobile phones, TVs, refrigerators, home speakers, or any other connected technology you can imagine.”

Initially Bixby 2.0 will roll out to “select developers” for a beta period via the company’s brand new Bixby SDK. This prompts the question of what teams would develop for more obscure items such as refrigerators and other devices that Samsung is pushing its Bixby voice assistant on.

In other news, Samsung is stepping up its effort in VR, working on bringing ARCore framework to its Galaxy devices and developing its Windows Mixed Reality headset, the Samsung Odyssey that apparently won’t be coming to Europe.

KitGuru Says: One small step for Samsung, one giant leap for those that want AI-powered fridges. I am interested to see if the company can catch up to other assistants on the market in any sort of meaningful way, though. Do you use Bixby? What are your impressions of Samsung’s effort?

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