Всё дело в том, что каждый создатель виртуальных помощников теперь стремится привлечь к своему продукту как можно больше пользователей, поскольку это даёт возможность искусственному интеллекту быстрее накапливать необходимую информацию для дальнейшего самообучения.
В результате сотрудничества южнокорейские партнёры собираются интегрировать искусственный интеллект Kakao I в голосовой помощник Samsung Bixby.
Глобальный релиз Bixby состоялся пару недель назад и в настоящее время AI-помощник поддерживает только корейский и (американский) английский языки, хотя в течение нескольких ближайших месяцев стартует поддержка основных европейских языков, включая британский английский, немецкий, французский, испанский, португальский, итальянский...
Компании обещают, что южнокорейские пользователи Bixby смогут получить доступ к сервисам Kakao, а пользователи Kakao, в свою очередь, смогут оценить возможности голосового помощника Bixby.
Генеральный директор Kakao Рим Джи-хон уверен, что такое сотрудничество доказывает конкурентоспособность AI-платформы Kakao и сообщает, что они намерены расширять сотрудничество с Samsung и на другие сферы, к примеру, интернет вещей и носимую электронику.
Уже в этом году Samsung и Kakao намерены представить несколько продуктов, которые сочетают в себе обе платформы.
Samsung Electronics to Team Up with Kakao in AI Sector
At the end of August, Amazon and Microsoft entered into alliance to surprise the world information technology (IT) industry. They announced a plan to link Amazon's speech recognition-based AI assistant Alexa with Microsoft's Cortana. Amazon devoid of services such as e-mail and schedule management complements such weaknesses by partnering with MS and MS is aiming to provide e-commerce service of Amazon.
After the end of the year when interoperation begins, Amazon AI speaker "Echo" users will be able to run MS app Cortana by saying "Alexa, start Cortana" and on the contrary, MS Windows 10 users will be able to put products into their carts by saying "Cortana, run Alexa". The partnership between two rival services was unusual, turning heads and was called “the Seattle Alliance” as the two companies are headquartered in Seattle.
Rival AI assistant services banded together for the first time in Korea. Samsung Electronics and Kakao announced on September 14 that they will connect AI secretaries “Bixby” and “Kakaoi” and cooperate in the AI sector. The two companies will collaborate in various fields such as home appliances, wearable devices, and the internet of things (IoT), and show the results starting in the second half of this year.
As the partnership is still young, nobody knows what they will come up with, but the partnership will be similar to the Seattle Alliance. Their new services are expected to be sending a Kakao Talk message or find directions on the Kakao map through Bixby and control Samsung Electronics home appliances by giving orders to Kakao Mini Speaker loaded with Kakaoi. Given that Kakao signed a contract with Hyundai Motor, GS E&C, POSCO E&C and Kakaoi, it is possible to initiate the Bixby directly in a car or at home. "Synergies will be created as Kakao has abundant contents and Samsung has a strength in hardware," Kakao said.
Until last year, the domestic AI assistant service market had only two players - SK Telecom’s Nugu and KT’s Giga Genie - but the market has entered the era with many runners, all of which can be the final winner as Samsung Electronics, Naver (Clover), Kakao and Google (Google Assistant) joined the competition. There is not the clear frontrunner with a wide gap with followers yet. Thus, these companies are bent on increasing their users.
It is expected that there will be a spike in partnership among competitors. "It is important to secure as many users as possible because of a characteristic of artificial intelligence that the more users an AI service has, the smarter it can become," an IT industry official said. Therefore, they will make attempts to expand contact points with users by pruning product prices or ramping up partnership with external players."
In the meantime, while Internet industry rivals Naver and Kakao are headed for a head-on collision by launching their AI speakers in the Korean market, the duel is developing into a fight between the two companies’ popular characters.
Naver is planning to launch Line Friend character versions of its AI speaker “Wave” in Korea this year. These products loaded with Naver's AI platform “Clover” will be modeled on popular characters such as “Brown” and “Sally.”
Kakao will also make the most of its characters for its AI speaker. Kakao's AI speaker “Kakao Mini” has simple appearances like Wave. “Kakao Friend” cute character dolls were used in Kakao Mini and Kakao Mini has been well received by customers thanks to the character dolls. These dolls are offered as a privilege to pre-order buyers, who can select either “Lion” or “Eo Peach.”
The reason why the two leading Internet companies put their characters front and center for the promotion of their AI speakers is that the AI speaker market is at the toddler stage and their friendly approaches to people at a time when AI speaker is still a stranger to most customers.
