A company called Keyshare Innovation Group partnered with a New Zealand to essentially rebuild Gatebox’s AI assistant from the ground up. Now, instead of an anime character, Keyshare’s assistant can take the form of a more realistic woman in a sharp uniform, or a beefy, bald man in gym attire. Obviously, these potential models are geared toward very different situations — the former would suitable for working as 24/7 concierges, and Keyshare (nearly) has contracts in place to install these AI assistants across a fleet of cruise ships by the end of the year.

The software isn’t the only facet of the experience that’s getting a revamp. While the original model relied on a projection tube to give Hikari a more pronounced sense of presence, the models Keyshare are working on use tablets mounted inside a similar, semi-circular glass chassis. The whole package is a little smaller as a result, but it retains the same slew of motion sensors and cameras to ensure these new virtual avatars can still convincingly interact with humans. Sure, it might not be quite as impactful as the original, but it seems a whole lot more practical for a company trying to get these things out into the wild fast.

Assuming Samsung doesn’t delay the device, that means you’ll finally be able to get your hands on a Bixby-powered speaker more than 18 months after Samsung first announced the Galaxy Home. We initially saw the device at the company’s Note 9 event in 2018. Minus a brief appearance at last year’s CES, we’ve heard very little about the speaker. The irony is that the Galaxy Home could still become vaporware. In the same interview, Kim revealed Samsung hasn’t decided whether it will ultimately release the bigger speaker.

It also looks like Samsung has scaled back its ambitions for Bixby. Rather than build out the AI’s ability to hold a conversation, Kim said the company instead focused on letting it control your other Samsung appliances and devices. For example, you’ll be able to tell Bixby when you want your dishwasher to wash the dishes and it will set a schedule. At launch, it also looks like Samsung won’t include an Alexa Skills-like API that will allow other companies to make their products work with the Galaxy Home Mini.

Kim didn’t outright mention Samsung’s upcoming Unpacked event on February 11th, but that seems as good a venue as any for the company to detail the device.

As part of the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18945, Insiders in the Fast ring can preview a handful of new features. The updated assistant supports light and dark themes in Windows. It has a less intrusive “Hey Cortana” screen that’s meant to minimize disruptions. Microsoft also updated the speech and language models, an attempt to make the chat-based UI better at processes speech and text queries. Not all of the previous Cortana features have made their way to the beta, but Microsoft says it plans to add them over time.

These updates come just days after Microsoft announced it’s changing the look of the Xbox One’s Home screen and how you control the console via Cortana. Those changes should roll out to everyone this fall. As for the standalone Cortana app, The Verge says we’ll have to wait until the first half of 2020 to see that deploy across Windows 10.

Microsoft Windows Blog