Our brief was to create awareness of Samsung’s A.I. voice assistant ‘Bixby ‘ in India while reiterating Samsung’s purpose of creating meaningful innovations using transformative future technologies. Innovation not just for the sake of it, but to empower those who need it the most.

Bixby Voice Forever is the world’s first personalized Voice Assistant. The first device was created for Sonal; a mother of two and Motor Neurone Disease patient. All MND patients lose their ability to speak. Before Sonal lost her speech, we engineered her own personalized Voice Assistant so she can leave her natural voice alive in her children’s smartphones and throughout all of their Samsung home appliances. We first recorded her voice and synthesized all tones, pitches and unique characteristics to create a realistic voice file we could integrate into Bixby’s A.I. code; to make her voice, the voice of Bixby. Then, we personalized the wake-up command from “Hi Bixby” to “Hi Mama,” and personalized the responses, so it always answers with her children’s names and personal information. By creating a personalized voice assistant, we can imagine a future where we all have a more meaningful relationship with Artificial Intelligence.

Our strategy was to build mass awareness of Samsung’s Bixby A.I. voice assistant in India, using an unconventional and meaningful marketing effort. By creating the first-ever personalized A.I. Voice assistant and using it to help an MND patient who will lose their voice, we can show the potential this technology can have to significantly impact the patient’s family, while at the same time showing the power of Bixby to enhance people’s lives.

1st: Development started in collaboration with the MND NGO Asha Ek Hope foundation, they explained how we could support them in the fight against the disease and helped us find the right patient. 2nd: Found Sonal, an MND patient willing to be the first to try this new technology. 3rd: Recorded her complete vocal range and created an exact digital replica of it. 4th: Synthesized the unique details of her speech using a custom Deep Neural Network algorithm. 5th: Integrated the Voice file into Bixby’s A.I. code, to make her real voice, the voice of Bixby. 6th: Personalized the wake-up command from “Hi Bixby” to Hi Mama.” 7th: Personalized the responses, so it always answers with her children’s names and relevant personal information. 8th: Created the final personalized Bixby devices and gifted them to the family.

The campaign raised awareness of MND across India and became a top Twitter trending topic for weeks. The Youtube video reached 100+ million views in less than 7 days and more than 201+ million views to date; making it one of the most viral commercials in history. Additionally, audiences created numerous reaction videos with thousands of views. But most importantly, we achieved in making this never before seen technology a reality and giving hope to MND patients around the world.