Samsung has hinted at an AI-powered phone for ages now, and we always expected the Galaxy S25 series to focus largely on Galaxy AI. It turns out there may be a lot more to this than expected: a new video from Samsung teases a “true AI companion” and displays the AI performing tasks well outside the scope of Bixby.
In the video, a woman tells the AI, “Hey, I’m off to my next meeting, but I need to find an Italian restaurant. Outdoor seating, pet friendly, of course. Can you send that to Luca? Oh, and can you put that in my calendar?” That’s a complex series of requests, spoken with a natural, meandering cadence, and the AI appears to take it all in without missing a beat. Her request for a restaurant also implies the AI knows her preferences well enough to suggest a location she would like.
Let’s break it down. “I’m off to my next meeting” implies the AI has calendar access and knows the timing of the meeting so that the phone can be put into Do Not Disturb mode. She requests a specific type of restaurant with specific features, then asks the AI to send the meeting to a contact and add it to her calendar all at once. That’s a big lift from most current AI assistants.
Bixby has always been the brunt of jokes because it’s less capable than Google Assistant (among other reasons), but the video points to some serious upgrades. This isn’t wholly surprising, though; in China, the next-generation Bixby AI has already been released, and a global launch is expected soon.
The video ends with the words, “A true AI companion is coming,” with the Galaxy AI logo underneath them before fading to a teaser screen for Galaxy Unpacked (that’s in eight days, by the way, on Wednesday, January 22.)
This upgraded AI will likely be available on the Galaxy S25 series out of the box after its announcement at Galaxy Unpacked, but there’s a chance it could come to other Samsung devices, too. Since it’s already available on Samsung phones in China, it doesn’t require the S25 chipset, but it’s also likely that it would come at the cost of performance on underpowered devices.
Either way, Gemini AI has already shown the ease of back-and-forth questions with AI. Bringing a similar functionality to the Galaxy S25 series will make it feel like a true next-generation upgrade.
