It only took five years and a refreshed partnership with Google, but Samsung’s BB-8-like Ballie robot is finally ready to roll into homes as soon as this Winter. At least in the early stages of Ballie’s life, Samsung will take a big swing at customers in the US, with no mention of an expanded release elsewhere. That’s fine by us. If Ballie is really as bright as Samsung makes it out to be, it might be safer to sit this one out, robotic apocalypse pending.
The balls are coming from inside the house
“Available to consumers this summer, Ballie will be able to engage in natural, conversational interactions to help users manage home environments, including adjusting lighting, greeting people at the door, personalizing schedules, setting reminders, and more,” the company said.
Customers are essentially shelling out for a fancier Alexa+ subscription, but, instead of running your life from inside a harmless little Echo Dot, Samsung has given Ballie a set of wheels and the ability to move about fit – though its primary goal is to follow its owners around, spouting reminders and dishing out style advice. That’s not to say we couldn’t take a megalomaniacal Ballie gone rogue, but the road to GLaDOS is shorter than it seems.
Ballie gets its AI smarts from Google’s Gemini multimodal capabilities, “along with proprietary Samsung language models” that handle several inputs, including voice, visual data from the onboard camera, and sensor data as it roams about your home. With Gemini behind the brains, Ballie is supposedly more conversational than before and adjusts its behaviour and responses in real time.
Read More: An advanced Samsung-branded home robot doesn’t seem like an outlandish idea
Continuing Google’s passion to become a doctor for all, Ballie will even serve as a personal WebMD, responding to prompts such as “I feel tired today,” before firing back with a list of advice, ranging from how one can better monitor their sleeping patterns, to easy methods to improve energy levels. How it will fare when presented with a more pressing medical matter remains to be seen, but we doubt Samsung will want to deal with the hassle.
“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,” said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian. “This expanded partnership with Samsung underscores our commitment to delivering reliable, enterprise-grade AI that drives lasting value for our customers – and their customers.”
The only question now is… how much is an advanced robotic assistant without a dedicated function (like cleaning the floors) worth? Companies like Tesla, Meta, and plenty of others are all hard at work to corner the market, but with an actual product ready to ship, it could be Samsung that wins the race.
