TL;DR
- Samsung announced this morning that an updated Bixby assistant will be available in One UI 8.5.
- This refreshed Bixby will be able to control device settings via natural language and connect to Perplexity to pull info from the web.
- The initial announcement is no longer available; we’ve asked Samsung why.
Bixby hasn’t seemed like much of a priority for Samsung lately, but it looks like that’s changing with the upcoming One UI 8.5 update. Earlier this morning, Samsung announced a beta for the latest version of its assistant, “upgraded to operate as a conversational device agent” that leverages Perplexity to answer complex questions.
Samsung, oddly enough, has since removed its announcement, with its URL currently pointing to a Page not found error. According to the announcement’s text as preserved by Droid Life, the new Bixby will let you control your device’s settings and features by making requests in natural language. For questions about topics other than your phone itself, Bixby will connect to Perplexity to pull info from the web.