Samsung Electronics to enable Galaxy S8 with artificial intelligence

South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics will enable its upcoming flagship smartphone Galaxy S8 with artificial intelligence assistant service. Samsung is making an untiring attempt to post a recovery from its global smartphone recalls.

The Galaxy S8 will let users order food or perform othertasks without going through a third-party application but bysimply asking the phone's virtual assistant, Samsung said in astatement. The artificial intelligence service will also be madeavailable in Samsung's other consumer electronics products,such as refrigerators.

The company declined to disclose what specific tasks the S8 phone will perform through its artificial intelligencefeature. Samsung is expected to unveil the next iteration for itsflagship Galaxy device in spring as it has typically done inthe past.

Sales of the Galaxy S8 will be crucial for therecovery of Samsung's mobile business, which saw its latestquarterly profit nearly wiped out by two global recalls of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone. Samsung estimates it has lost at least $5.3 billion as itdiscontinued the model, which overheated and caught fire.The company said last month that it has not figured out whatwent wrong with the Note 7 phones.

The South Korean company joined the race to create thedigital assistant service when it acquired in October Viv LabsInc, a Silicon Valley startup launched by the sameentrepreneurs who sold Siri to Apple. Past and current Samsungphones offer a voice assistant service called "S Voice"developed internally, but the feature did not gain muchtraction.

Samsung's acquisition of the Silicon Valley firm was seenas its taking another step to seek independence from Google,which offers its brand of virtual assistant service inAndroid-powered devices.

Executives at Samsung and Viv Labs said that the biggestdifference between the existing digital assistant and the onethey are jointly developing is that the latter will be an"open AI platform," meaning that third-party developers willbe able to offer their services through Samsung's AI platform.

"Our Galaxy smartphones don't provide services that enableconsumers to order pizza or coffee, but does provide thirdparty applications. But the new AI platform will enableconsumers to do things that they would usually do through aseparate third party application," Samsung's statement said.