Behind the scenes of Samsung's original AI technology "Galaxy AI" and "Bixby" Japanese development

On Monday, March 31, 2025, Samsung Electronics Japan Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Samsung") held a lecture for the media in which a representative from the Samsung R&D Institute Japan talked about the Japanese development of "Galaxy AI" and "Bixby" developed by Samsung. On the day of the event, Mr. Akasako, Head of Mobile Solution Lab Artificial Intelligence Part, Samsung R&D Institute Japan, Inc., explained the mechanism of the Galaxy AI and Bixby functions and the behind the scenes of development.

What is the development of Samsung R&D Institute Japan?

At the Samsung R&D Institute Japan, we had previously focused on hardware development, but in 2023, we launched our first software development team. We contributed to the Japanese language support for Galaxy AI, which was featured in the Galaxy S24 series released in 2024. Furthermore, we released the first Japanese version of Bixby with the launch of the Galaxy S25 series in February 2025.

What is structure of "Galaxy AI" that translates foreign languages into Japanese? | Interpretation function with 3-stage engine

Galaxy AI consists of a hybrid type of AI: "on-device AI" that can perform on-device processing without communication and privacy protection, and "cloud-based AI" that processes in the cloud. Currently, Samsung is focusing on the development of on-device AI, and especially for Japanese, we started development in Japan about two years ago and continue to pursue highly accurate language development.

In addition, we are also focusing on the development of AI modules that make up the "interpreter function of on-device AI. The development mechanism consists of three stages: ① speech recognition that recognizes the voice "Hello", ② machine translation that translates "Hello" as "hello", and ③ speech synthesis in which the voice "hello" is spoken and transmitted to the other party. Speech recognition is developed in Japan, and machine translation and speech synthesis are jointly developed in Japan and the head office.
* The interpretation function has been developed with the assumption that it will be used mainly when conversing with local people, such as during travel.

Behind the scenes of "Galaxy AI" development | Development speed improved by moving the development base to Japan

Galaxy AI's AI module comes from the Galaxy Store in the form of language packs and works on-device. In order to improve quality, we regularly upload the latest packs to the store and upgrade them.

Galaxy AI's Japanese speech recognition engine was developed at Samsung R&D Institute Laboratories in Beijing, China until March 2024, but has been under development in Japan since April. As a result, many native Japanese engineers have become involved in development, and the above problems specific to the Japanese language have been detected at an early stage, leading to an improvement in development speed.

In addition, in order to improve quality and expand functions, we regularly upgrade the version of each component.

Difficulties in developing "Galaxy AI" | Japanese with many homophones

In Japanese, there are many homophones (examples in parentheses: "bridge" and "chopsticks"), personal name notation that is difficult to judge even in context, and the reading of Arabic numerals and English is not constant ("S25" is read as "Est. Twenty Five" by others, while others are read as "Es ni Jugo" or "Es ni Go"), there are many homographic hexonomes (the text "that person" may be read as "that person" or "that person"), it is a high-context language with many ambiguous expressions (absence of subject), and unlike Latin languages, it does not separate words with spaces. The difficulty of developing the Japanese language is that it is unique.

How does "Bixby" work? |Function and service call by 5-stage engine

Bixby began development in November 2023. Most of Bixby's components run in the cloud, so it can offer a wealth of services. The tasks it supports are mainly categorized into "device function calls (phone calls, messages, settings, Samsung applications, etc.)" and "service calls (weather news, Netflix, etc.)." It consists of various AI related components, such as "Start recording a run" into text), language understanding (understanding the intent of "I want to record a run"), task execution (running the Samsung Health start running recording task), language generation, and speech synthesis. The speech recognition engine and speech synthesis engine used here are the same as the interpretation functions of Galaxy AI, which leads to shortening and streamlining of development.

Strengths of "Bixby" | Optimized for Samsung Galaxy devices and depth of linkage with Samsung applications

Bixby is characterized by being a system that focuses on "task execution" rather than casually conversing with users. In addition, the fact that it is optimized for Samsung Galaxy devices and the depth of integration with Samsung apps are also strengths. Last month, we strengthened the linkage with Samsung Wallet and started providing the ability to link two actions.

We will continue to develop high-quality and truly useful Japanese AI to improve the satisfaction of Samsung Galaxy users.