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On Tuesday, Samsung unveiled an updated version of its Bixby voice assistant but quietly pulled the announcement just hours later. The reason for the rollback remains unclear, but multiple news outlets had already reported on the update by then, giving a peek into what to expect.
As SamMobile reports, Samsung has teamed up with Perplexity to revive its voice assistant. The collaboration will allow users to have more natural interactions with Bixby, including asking it to complete a few on-device tasks and fetch answers from the web.
Rumors about Samsung’s plans to integrate Perplexity into Bixby had been circulating for a few months. The confirmation comes just a week after arch-rival Apple announced it would be powering its voice assistant, Siri, using Google’s Gemini. Oddly, Samsung’s own suite of AI features for mobile, known as Galaxy AI, has so far been powered by Google’s AI models.
Samsung shared a few examples to demonstrate how the new Perplexity-powered Bixby understands your device and requests better.
In one example, the company said you could ask Bixby not to lock the screen while you’re still looking at it. The assistant will then understand the context and automatically enable the “Keep Screen On While Viewing” setting. You can also ask questions like why the screen is on when the device is in your pocket, and it will pull up relevant settings for you to enable or disable.
The other big example turns Bixby into a proper chatbot. When you ask it to pull up information, like you would in a browser, Bixby taps into Perplexity's models to respond.
Samsung originally said it would begin testing the updated Bixby as part of the One UI 8.5 beta program. A public release will follow soon, most likely with a stable version of One UI 8.5 expected alongside the Galaxy S26 series next month. However, Samsung's decision to pull its own announcement may suggest a delay, so we'll have to wait and hear more from the brand.