Rumours have been spreading about Samsung’s digital assistant being retired in favour of deeper integration of the Google Assistant. Lending more credence to the rumour is Samsung’s apparent removal of several AR features from Bixby Vision.

Samsung has already sent notices to its users that they will be discontinuing some of the features in Bixby Vision. The notice sent out late last month mentioned the removal of features such as Styling, Home, Decor and Places by the end of October. These features may return in some form with partnerships to enhance the AR features but the likelihood of that happening at this point seems slim.

While the discontinuation and removal of a bulk of AR features from Bixby may seem like a sudden move, it’s not surprising. Samsung was a late player to the game when it came to virtual assistants with companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft spearheading development. However, more recent rumours point to Google actually offering Samsung a large sum of money to drop Bixby in favour for deeper Google Assistant integration into the company’s ecosystem.

That said, minimising or removing Bixby would be counter intuitive for Samsung. The company announced a few years ago that the Bixby would be the cornerstone of their Galaxy Ecosystem. In fact, they went in depth during their Southeast Asia – Oceania (SEAO) forum held in Singapore. They were detailing the integrations that would be pursued.

That being the case, this development is definitely one we’ll be keeping our eye on.