Shortage of data causing Samsung troubles in launching Bixby Voice for the U.S.

Big data is a big deal. The full launch of the English version of Samsung's Bixby voice control interface for the Galaxy S8 is still in a holding pattern, after originally expecting to launch in June. The delay comes from a handful of issues with the service but is driven by a lack of usage data that's ultimately required for the machine learning systems to work at their full potential. Although the service is already available in Samsung's home country of South Korea, evolving Bixby for use with U.S. English is proving tougher. Because of the vast number of potential commands and numerous pathways to accomplish those commands within the interface and apps on a phone, the only realistic way to make it all work is for machine learning algorithms to process large amounts of data and determine those links automatically. Samsung's engineers can of course set them on the right path, but in the end, you need real-world usage data to show the algorithms how people are using the service and how to best accomplish the commands.