Samsung’s Bixby disses Apple’s Siri in voice assistant rap battle

Samsung just couldn’t resist taking a swipe at Apple’s Siri using its own smart voice assistant, could it?

Bixby, which launched this weekend in South Korea on the Samsung Galaxy S8, hides a rather innocuous diss within a command. Asking Bixby to “please rap” or “beatbox”, the voice assistant drops rhymes that would put Pitbull out of work.

But more interesting still is the message hidden within one particular rap.

Users on the Samsung subreddit noticed that when the first letters of a rap’s lines are read vertically, it spells out the sentence “I am better than Siri”.

That’s rude, Samsung. Also, dope beat.

If the world didn’t have Korean speakers or indeed Reddit, this small Easter egg likely been hidden forever. Besides these two points though, Bixby isn’t yet available beyond South Korean borders.

Samsung’s Bixby might not be working beyond South Korean borders just yet, but it’s already throwing shade on Apple’s Siri

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is set to launch in South Africa on 5 May, but there’s no indication just how contextually integrated Bixby will be within the country, even if its supported list of apps is fairly beefy.

Notably, Microsoft had acclimatisation issues when it launched Cortana in South Africa on Windows 10 in2015. Speaking of Cortana, Samsung’s Bixby isn’t the first voice assistant to have a go at Siri.

In 2014, Microsoft pitted the iPhone against the Cortana-enabled Lumia 635 to see which was faster issuing simple commands. Considering it was a Redmond-made ad, I think we all know who “won”.

In the greater scheme of the voice assistant war, this is a cheap shot by Samsung, but it doesn’t bear much force. Well, at least until Bixby can prove its worth out in the field.

But considering that Samsung still crafts a vast majority of Apple’s iPhone, perhaps the Korean manufacturer can say what ever it wants?

Feature image: Karlis Dambrans via Flickr (CC 2.0, resized)