Struth! Samsung's Bixby debuts Down Under

Artificial intelligence platforms are the next big battleground in mobile devices. Google is investing heavily in its platform, Google Assistant, and Samsung is taking its AI platform so seriously that it has even dedicated an entire button to it: that button on the left hand side of the Galaxy S8 and S8, that you can short press to call up Bixby's (currently barely populated) news service/reminders page, or that you can long press to call up . . . Well, to call up nothing at the moment, but when the Bixby updates roll out a long press of that button should open up an Australia version of the voice-recognition engine, one that officials say will be able to recognise even the most bogan Australian accent, and that will eventually speak back in an Australian accent, too. Getting Bixby to talk like an Australian may take a couple more updates, however, officials say. A Bixby that can understand American accents was released in a US in mid July.