• Samsung’s new smart TVs now include the Vision AI Companion
• The conversational assistant is powered by Samsung Bixby, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity
• The AI is angling to make the TV a regular hub for tasks well beyond finding a show to watch.

Samsung has officially launched its Vision AI Companion for its new smart TVs, fusing several AI models into potentially the de facto source of answers and assistance in your home. The blend of Samsung Bixby, Microsoft Copilot, and Perpleixty makes for a personality that can do a lot more than just suggest what to watch. The AI can explain what’s happening with the show or movie you’re watching and answer any follow-up questions, translate a live show in another language for you, and even plan your holiday dinner.

This isn’t your dad’s “What’s the weather?” voice remote. Samsung aims to make its televisions the smartest, most helpful devices in the house. The collaborative panel of AI models adds up to what may be the most conversational TV experience ever. The platform is launching across Samsung’s 2025 Neo QLED, OLED, Micro LED, and lifestyle display lines.

Samsung isn’t positioning Vision AI Companion as a solo tool, like a phone assistant or a desktop chatbot. It’s pitched as a collective interface, one that multiple people in a room can interact with at once. A friend might ask where the beach scene in the show they are watching was filmed, or you might ask for the recipe to a meal shown on screen. The TV might even respond to someone commenting that you should have a movie night on Friday by recommending options.

The AI can carry natural, multi-step conversations and reference both what’s onscreen and what’s recently been asked. It can remember requests and refine results without restating every time. And the Live Translate feature can take any audio on screen and translate it in real time.

It can also be less obtrusive than most TV AI tools. Instead of pausing or talking over the content if you ask for weather info, you just see the information slide up on the screen. Asking for that recipe brings up visual guides in a side panel. Samsung is betting the AI companion will turn passive viewing into interactive companionship.

Samsung’s smart home hub

Samsung is betting that a fusion of tools will be the thing to get people engaged with the smart TV assistant. Vision AI Companion is a search engine, a translator, a planner, a visual explainer, a recommendation engine, and more, all at once. That’s important since Samsung, unlike Apple or Amazon, doesn’t have a smartphone-first ecosystem for AI or a dedicated smart speaker brand dominating the living room. The TV is where Samsung can plant its AI flag.

Of course, you have to be comfortable with the TV listening to you, too. Samsung says the AI system is privacy-conscious, that it only responds when the dedicated button is activated, and that it keeps user data protected. But for personalized responses, the AI has to know more about you. On-device learning and linked accounts mean you’ll need to be okay with a television that doesn’t just know what you’re watching, but who you are beyond the living room.

What Samsung is doing with Vision AI Companion is positioning the TV not just as a window to the world, but as a kind of flat-screen personal assistant specifically for when everyone is home. It won’t replace your phone, but it might smooth out organizing home life. If it all works as Samsung claims, you may someday wonder why you ever had to pause your show, pick up your phone, ask the question, and wait for an answer.

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Eric Hal Schwartz is a freelance writer for TechRadar with more than 15 years of experience covering the intersection of the world and technology. For the last five years, he served as head writer for Voicebot.ai and was on the leading edge of reporting on generative AI and large language models. He’s since become an expert on the products of generative AI models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google Gemini, and every other synthetic media tool. His experience runs the gamut of media, including print, digital, broadcast, and live events. Now, he’s continuing to tell the stories people want and need to hear about the rapidly evolving AI space and its impact on their lives. Eric is based in New York City.