A self-driving bus stops near Cheonggye Stream in Seoul's central district of Jongno. A slick and shiny mini bus moved smoothly toward the Cheonggye Plaza bus stop near Gwanghwamun Station, central Seoul. Four passengers, including this reporter, got on board. The vehicle with seven passenger seats had an airy, open feel, with an impressive panoramic glass roof and full-size windows on four sides. There was someone sitting in the driver's seat, but his hands never touched the steering wheel even as the bus started moving.

It's deep machine learning because a machine learns, it doesn't interpret.

Cameras that take lens flare-free photos at night, sunlight-readable displays and enhanced durability with tougher and lighter frames: all are …

Gray G. Lee, head of the AI Center under Samsung Research, said Thursday the upcoming flagship Galaxy Note 9 will adopt an upgraded artificial intelligence platform, Bixby 2.0. To the question of the expected launch of Bixby 2.0, Lee told The Korea Herald that the upcoming flagship smartphone model in the second half of the year would feature the advanced Bixby platform, after a press conference to announce Samsung's vision for AI. Samsung Research AI Center Head Gray G. Lee (By Song Su-hyun /The Korea Herald) According to his remarks, Bixby 2.0 will be upgraded with enhanced natural language processes, improved noise resistance capability and quicker response times. Samsung is preparing to unveil the Galaxy Note 9 in August, which will be one of the attention-grabbing high-end smartphones to be launched in the second half of this year. To improve its AI platform and technologies, Samsung plans to expand its workforce that specializes in AI to up to 1,000, continue creating AI centers in different parts of the world, and consider mergers and acquisitions of promising AI businesses, Lee said.

It looks like Samsung's Galaxy S9 will come with a new feature to put it in direct competition with Apple's iPhone X.Credit: Tom's GuideThe tech giant has nearly completed the development of neural processing units (NPUs) to improve the artificial intelligence features baked into future smartphones, The Korea Herald is reporting, citing sources who claim to have knowledge of the chip's development. The Korea Herald's sources said Samsung is planning to add the artificial intelligence chips to both smartphones and servers. "For mobile devices, Samsung has already reached the technological levels of Apple and Huawei, but will come up with better chips for sure in the second half of the year," the source added. Like other companies, Samsung has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence on the premise that doing so could improve the broader user experience. Apple already offers an AI chip in its iPhone X that the company says can perform "up to 600 billion operations per second."

Samsung's Bixby digital assistant hasn't been received well by Galaxy S8, S8 and Note 8 users. And now Samsung is reportedly replacing the head of the Bixby team and might even launch a new version of the assistant next week. Samsung's Rhee In-jong is being replaced as the head of development of the Bixby digital voice assistant by Chung Eui-seok, the head of service intelligence at the company's South Korean headquarters, according to The Investor. The Chung's service group is in charge of developing Bixby and other services related to artificial intelligence. Chung worked for Ericsson before joining Samsung in 2011 and is credited for being the software specialist behind Samsung's security program Knox and Samsung Pay.

We have been hearing rumors regarding a Bixby-powered speaker for quite some time now, and although we still don't know much about it, we do know that it is coming. A couple of weeks ago, a Samsung executive confirmed that the company is indeed developing its own smart connected speaker that will have Bixby on board. Thanks to a report by The Korea Herald, we now know just a little bit more about the upcoming device. Samsung is developing it in partnership with Harman International, the company it acquired back in March for $8 billion. In a chat with The Korea Herald, Dinesh Paliwal, the CEO of Harman International, said that he had a meeting with Samsung's president and CEO of the consumer electronics business during IFA in Berlin.

Samsung is rumored to be building its own smart speaker, which will be powered by its Bixby voice assistant. The development of the device is said to have slowed down due to the lack of progress with Bixby. Samsung's smart speaker is said to be codenamed as Vega, according to The Wall Street Journal (via The Verge). Unfortunately, the WSJ's report didn't include details about the smart speaker's specifications, nor did it provide a timeframe for when consumers can expect it to be released. What was made certain about the report is the development of project Vega is being slowed down.

A new report claims that Samsung is working on a smart speaker that would directly compete with Google Home and Amazon's Echo devices. Samsung's speaker will be powered by Bixby, the digital assistant that was first introduced on the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. The new report on Samsung's rumored smart connected speaker was made The Korea Herald. The news site said that Samsung has already been granted design patents for the new standalone speaker device, and that it will most likely be powered by the company's own Bixby assistant. The report is quite accurate as IBT reported last month that Samsung was indeed granted two patents: one for a Note-branded smartphone, and another that's only called as an "Audio Device."

Yoo Kwang-yeol, commissioner of the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit, said his agency is currently working to upgrade the main system that stores and analyzes information regarding hundreds of millions of financial transactions in order to increase accuracy of capturing suspicious transactions out of normal ones. "We are considering an uptake of the artificial intelligence technology to improve the current intelligence system by benchmarking advanced systems in countries like Australia and Canada," Yoo said in an interview with The Korea Herald. Yoo Kwang-yeol, commissioner of Korea Financial Intelligence Unit speaks during an interview at his office in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, Dec. 6. Ahn Hoon/The Korea Herald For this, a group of KOFIU experts paid a trip to Australia earlier this month to learn from the Australian financial intelligence system. "AI can help improve efficiency of sorting out suspicious financial transactions and accuracy of analyzing related account information," Yoo said.