The field of artificial intelligence is living a great moment of development and progress in the hands of major technology companies as Google or Apple that are worrying by integrating it into their services and move it to the users every day. But after the artificial intelligence there are lesser-known companies that are its real creators. It is the case of Viv.
Viv, the artificial intelligence Assistant, has aroused great interest and attention over the past year. Founded from the collaboration between Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham, which was originally created to Siri, the virtual assistant that Apple integrates into their mobile devices and recently also on their desktop computers, has been considered as a personal assistant to many more powerful and more capable than the own Siri. Now, as reported by the web site TechCrunch, Samsung has bought Viv and has plans to implement it in their devices.
Viv “will make more intelligent” Samsung
It is a common practice that large companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook and many others acquire other smaller companies, often startups, which have been able to develop specific technologies or services that implemented in their own, represent an added value for your customer user experience. You have seen in numerorisimas times, and it will continue watching in the future.
The most recent example is the acquisition of Viv, a technology of artificial intelligence that has received high accolades over the past year. In this case, history repeats itself, although some actors have changed.
The creators of Viv created Siri, which was acquired by Apple. Later, these same people developed Viv, which has now been acquired by his great rival, Samsung. Is not clear the final agreement price is that Samsung has arrived to get Viv, but considering that in 2010 Apple paid an estimated number of more than 200 million dollars, it is likely that Samsung is has scraped even more pocket, since it is a technology that is born from the hand of the same creators with previous experience of these, and that many qualify as more powerful and more capable than Siri.
According to TechCrunch, by the time Viv will continue to operate as an independent company that offers its services to Samsung and its devices. This is a kind of transitional phase which, with the passage of time, often end up in a complete integration.
Viv offers a great advantage
Viv was initially released at the beginning of this year. Kittlaus and Cheyer said that Viv was far more capable than Siri and that they never had the intention that Siri will become a kind of icon of the Artificial Intelligence in the way he did.
The great strength of Viv is its integration with third-party services and applications, something that Apple is slowly leading to Siri IOS 10. A curious fact from 9to5Google point to Siri integrating data from 42 different services when it was launched for the first time, but Apple decided to simplify it before adding it to the iPhone.
Samsung plans with Viv, and now takes a position of advantage
Earlier this year, both Facebook and Google showed your interest in Viv however, negotiations did not succeed. Still, Viv has raised funds from such personalities as the own Mark Zuckerberg or the Director of Twitter Jack Dorsey.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Vice President of Samsung Jacopo Lenzi explained that Viv could have a direct impact on more than the Samsung mobile division:
This is an acquisition that is being done by the mobile team, but we see clearly the interest in all our devices. From our perspective and from the perspective of customer, interest and power of this reality comes from taking advantage of the global scale of Samsung, as well as the richness of the points of contact we have with consumers.
The acquisition of Viv by Samsung grants the company a big advantage over other Android device manufacturers. In addition, it is especially remarkable considering that Google has just presented its new smartphones Pixel, the only ones with Google Assistant, which for the moment will be exclusive. In addition, the acquisition also reduces the dependence of the South Korean company on Google.
