Samsung Electronics has agreed to buy Viv Labs, an artificial intelligence startup created by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham.
You may not have heard of Kittlaus, Cheyer or Brigham, but if you own an iPhone you've probably spoken with one of their creations, Siri. Apple bought their first startup, a spinoff from SRI International, in 2010. A couple of years later, they left to create Viv.
Samsung's move into AI could be seen as a reaction to Google's launch of a new AI assistant on its Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones on Tuesday.
Like Google Assistant, Viv is designed to answer natural language queries by integrating with a variety of web services. But where Google already has a range of in-house services -- Maps, Gmail, search -- from which to gather context, Viv aims to build an open ecosystem. Many of the useful functions will be delivered by third party developers, a model similar to the one Amazon.com is pursuing for its Echo devices.
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