Samsung’s Bixby is making a Perplexity-powered comeback

Purported screenshots from One UI 8.5 suggest Samsung is finally giving Bixby the AI upgrade it desperately needed, and the company is doing so by teaming up with Perplexity AI.

A Reddit user running a rooted device shared images showing off what appears to be a completely revamped Bixby experience. The screenshots confirm rumours from last year about Samsung partnering with Perplexity.

Leaked screenshots show Samsung’s assistant getting a proper AI upgrade

So here’s how this works. Bixby will still handle all the basic stuff it’s always been decent at — toggling Bluetooth, turning on Dark Mode, setting alarms, that sort of thing.

But when you ask something that requires actual thinking or research, Bixby hands that off to Perplexity instead of fumbling through its own limited knowledge base. The responses apparently come back looking like proper researched answers with citations you can actually follow up on.

Beyond this, Samsung appears to be mirroring the Gemini experience, giving everything a Samsung spin. It’s doing this by building out some features that directly compete with Google’s Gemini offerings.

For instance, there’s a new “Circle to Ask” feature that mirrors Google’s Circle to Search, and a “Bixby Live” interface that looks remarkably similar to Gemini Live. This lets you share your screen with the assistant and discuss what’s on it, or even point your camera at something and have a conversation about your surroundings.

The integration goes beyond just search capabilities too. One UI 8.5 reportedly brings deeper third-party app support, with Bixby working alongside services like Uber, HERE Maps, The Weather Channel, and Skyscanner. You’ll also be able to upload documents and discuss them in whatever style you prefer.

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Interestingly, the Chinese version of Bixby is reportedly even more capable, using models like DeepSeek for multimodal tasks.

Now, there’s a catch. Even though everything in these leaked screenshots looks fairly polished, there’s no guarantee Samsung will ship all of this with One UI 8.5. The company might keep testing internally for a while longer.

The news comes after Samsung smart TVs became the first to support the Perplexity AI app back in October.