Bixby can answer calls with your voice

As part of Samsung’s upcoming One UI 5.1 update, the company has opted to improve the Bixby experience. The smart voice assistant has been in obscurity lately, but it appears to have received an additional reason to exist in the form of Bixby Text Call. This feature allows users to answer calls by just typing text that is read by a generic computer-generated voice, but in the future it can be based on your voice.

For everything to work, the user initially needs to register a few text phrases on the phone. Phrases are parsed by Bixby so that it speaks back to the text you type when you can’t or don’t want to take calls. This is in your voice with the right intonation.

The new text-to-voice functionality will be available to users of Samsung’s new S23 devices, and initially, the Bixby Text Call app only works in English. When One UI 5.1 is released, the sound generator is also missing and it should only be possible to use computer generated sound.

When users are expected to start using their voice with the Text Call feature, it remains invisible. Right now, the feature is being tested in South Korea so it won’t be long before it’s widely launched. However, the Swedish version will not be available in the near future.

Similar services use artificial intelligence to generate speech from text. Among other things, the Microsoft project electronic wall It can create a relatively human voice with natural changes in pitch, and Amazon is testing similar functionality with Alexa where the focus is on recreating specific sounds. Duplex is called a Google variant that should be able to have human conversations with restaurants to make table orders and the like.

Do you want to answer with your AI-generated voice or the real thing?