Over the past year, Viv's artificial intelligence has garnered a lot of attention. Viv was founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer, and Chris Brigham, the original creators of Siri. Since the first operational tests were made public Viv has proven to be a more powerful and capable personal assistant than Siri. In fact, one of the reasons why the creators of Siri left the company, after its purchase by Apple, was the path set by Apple for Siri, a path very different from what its creators had in mind. To retaliate, these last three years have been working on Viv, which according to specialized media is the best assistant with artificial intelligence currently on the market.
According to TechCrunch the Korean company Samsung has just acquired Viv to integrate it into its next devices. At the moment we do not know how much Samsung will have paid to get Viv, but considering that Apple paid 200 million dollars in 2010 to get Siri, the price of the agreement could be somewhat higher. For now, Viv will continue to operate as an independent company offering this service for all the company's devices where this artificial intelligence assistant is implemented.
What makes Viv an improved assistant compared to Siri is that integrates with third-party applications and services, something that Apple has now begun to allow with the arrival of iOS 10. With Viv we can request our smartphone to send an Uber to our location, request a four-season pizza, reserve a table on the Rte Manolete ... all without having to open the application in no time.
In order to carry out this project, the creators of Viv have obtained funding from various companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter. Precisely Facebook and Google were interested in this assistant but the negotiations for the sale were not satisfactory for either party. TechCrunch has reached out to Samsung Vice President Jacopo Lenzi who has stated that Viv could have a direct impact on more than just Samsung's mobile division:
This is an acquisition geared towards the mobile division, but we see the possibilities of integrating Viv into other devices we make. From our perspective and from the customer's perspective, the interest and power of this artificial intelligence offers us an important advantage over other competitors, adding an advantage over them.
Viv would not only integrate with mobile devices, but Samsung could also integrate them into home appliances that manufactures to control them through voice commands, televisions and any other device that can be controlled in this way.
The acquisition of Viv by Samsung gives the Korean company an advantage over other Android manufacturers, especially considering that Google Assistant will only be available on the Pixel terminals that the company presented a couple of days ago, at least for the moment. In addition, the purchase of Viv allows you to continue reducing dependence on Google as well as offering the possibility of starting to implement this assistant in Tizen, both in the version for smartphones and in the version for smartwatches.