Samsung has finally taken the wrapss off its flagship smartphone lineup — Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. Alongside these devices, the Korean hardware giant has also officially released the complete details about their Bixby artificial intelligent (AI) assistant. It is deeply integrated into several functionalities across the device, especially the camera which is powered by a widely popular social networking platform — Pinterest.
According to an official Pinterest blog post, Samsung’s Bixby virtual assistant will be utilizing its visual discovery capabilities to detect and identify items in the surroundings. The Korean giant has touted the varied capabilities of the assistant, which can interact with the world through four distinct ways, namely: Voice, Vision, Reminder and Home. And we’re here to talk about the intelligence of the AI virtual assistant being used to improve the vision of the camera.
Using your Galaxy S8/S8+, you’re free to just point your camera at an object — be it wine bottles, smartwatches, any building or pet in the your vicinity — and Bixby would turn up with recommendations, other contextual info and an option to purchase the same. This is being made possible, thanks to Pinterest’s data and image recognition technology. With this feature, you’re not only served standard image search results but see results from the social media giant’s platform as well.
Talking about their integration into Galaxy S8, the blog post reads,
Soon you’ll be able to access billions of Pinterest ideas from every corner of your Galaxy S8. Any new pic you snap with your camera, photo in your photo gallery, images across the web in the Samsung Internet app…they’re all a jumping off point for finding related ideas on Pinterest, from recommendations for similar products to ways to bring the idea, recipe or style to life.
For those unaware, Pinterest visual discovery is a significant functionality within the company’s Lens application, which was unveiled last month. This enables users to capture the photograph of a product in the surrounding and discover different pins, ideas and other projects related to that product. A similar feature has now been integrated into Samsung’s default camera and can be accessed Bixby’s dedicated hardware button. This means Pinterest’s own Lens app will become redundant for Galaxy S8 users, who now the functions baked into their phones.
This is the first time Pinterest’s image recognition technology is making its way out of their web platform to a hardware device. This is not an exclusive deal but will be siginificantly beneficial for the social media company as it has recently been laying immense focus on their technology. It recently brought on board Google Image search veteran Randy Keller to help make their search product better. It has also launched a slew of feature upgrades to its platform, allowing users to highlight elements within the picture, viewed live via the camera or a usual image search, and then initiate a fresh web search related to that element.
