Samsung puts generative AI Bixby on its TVs

Watching a movie and trying to place that one familiar face usually means fishing out your phone and scrolling through IMDb.

Samsung wants to cut out that middle step. The company is now rolling out a major generative AI overhaul to its virtual assistant Bixby across its 2025 TV lineup, packaged as a feature called Vision AI Companion.

First unveiled back at the IFA trade show in September, the update is now going live with support for 10 languages, including English, Korean, and Spanish.

Asking questions about your screen

Vision AI Companion is designed to understand what is happening on your display in real time.

Samsung says you can pause or watch and ask conversational questions about what is on screen, like what an actor is famous for, who painted a piece of art in the background, or the final score of a football game.

It also goes beyond on-screen trivia. The assistant can field everyday queries, serving up TV and movie recommendations, cooking tips, travel advice, and local restaurant discovery.

Because it lives on a big display, the answers are not just spoken aloud. They come paired with visual cards and graphics overlaid on the screen.

Copilot and Perplexity under the hood

To make conversational answers feel natural, Samsung didn't rely solely on its legacy assistant code.

The new Bixby is powered by generative AI, combining models from multiple partners, specifically Microsoft Copilot and AI search engine Perplexity. Samsung claims the assistant can now track conversational context and handle follow-up questions smoothly.

Beyond chat, Vision AI Companion is set to act as the central control hub for Samsung's broader suite of TV intelligence features, tying in tools like AI picture optimization and real-time translation.

Why it matters

For owners of Samsung's newest sets, this transforms the TV from a passive glass panel into an interactive living room assistant. Being able to ask about a scene without picking up your phone is a natural convenience, especially with visual responses tailored for a large screen. The catch is hardware gating: it is currently limited to the 2025 lineup, leaving older models behind for now.

On the hardware battlefield, this move highlights Samsung's unique position in the home. Unlike Amazon, Apple, or Google, Samsung doesn't sell standalone smart speakers. Outside of smart refrigerators and washing machines, the TV is its primary beachhead in your living room.

We think partnering with Microsoft and Perplexity rather than trying to build a frontier LLM from scratch was a pragmatic move. It lets Samsung focus on hardware integration while borrowing best-in-class conversational search. The question mark will be responsiveness: juggling multiple third-party models on a TV processor without frustrating lag will determine whether viewers actually talk to their screen or just keep Googling on their phones.