Samsung initially introduced the Ballie “companion robot” in early 2020, and it’s still not become an actual product you can buy. That, however, will finally change this summer, when Ballie will become available in the US and Korea.
Ahead of the release, we’ve already seen a teaser video earlier this month, and today Samsung is announcing that Ballie will come with Google’s Gemini AI built-in. Awkwardly, there’s no mention of Bixby whatsoever in the press release, so maybe Samsung’s in-house assistant got kicked out.
Yongjae Kim, Executive Vice President of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics, said:
Through this partnership, Samsung and Google Cloud are redefining the role of AI in the home. By pairing Gemini’s powerful multimodal reasoning with Samsung’s AI capabilities in Ballie, we’re leveraging the power of open collaboration to unlock a new era of personalized AI companion — one that moves with users, anticipates their needs and interacts in more dynamic and meaningful ways than ever before.
Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud, said:
With Gemini on Google Cloud, Samsung is demonstrating how to deploy generative AI at scale, integrating it directly into the heart of their popular products. This expanded partnership with Samsung underscores our commitment to delivering reliable, enterprise-grade AI that drives lasting value for our customers – and their customers.
Ballie will use Gemini’s multimodal capabilities as well as proprietary Samsung language models to process and understand inputs such as audio and voice, visual data from its camera, and sensor data from its environment. Thus it will be able to adapt its behaviors and responses in real-time. It will help you manage your home, your health, and your wellbeing too.
Unfortunately, pricing is still a mystery, but we definitely don’t expect Ballie to be cheap.
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