There's speculation going on the internet that Samsung is redesigning or I might say replacing Bixby by an actual 3D model named Sam in short for Samantha. 
A lot of you commented yesterday asking whether or not this thing is actually true? Is Bixby indeed getting replaced by Sam, this virtual assistant? Well, let me explain.
First off, Sam is created by Lightfarm in collaboration with Cheil, Cheil is a marketing company owned by Samsung. Minutes after photos of Sam were posted it took over the internet, people started appreciating her looks saying she's attractive, it was trending on Twitter for hours, and people even made dedicated subreddits for her with some having over 60K members. And many started calling Sam their ‘waifu’. I don't watch Anime, so I had to look it up, It basically means who your wife is in the anime world or in other words, an anime character towards which a person feels attracted.
Lightfarm who created this released a statement that says,
Throughout the process, the team devoted itself to developing realistic materials, mainly for the character’s hair and clothing, so that Sam appeared aesthetically pleasing. Sam was an incredible partnership between the Cheil Agency and Lightfarm, and we are thrilled to be part of this project!
Interestingly, Lightfarm took the webpage down for some reason. Not really sure why, probably it has to do with people creating not suitable for work meme out of this character. I don't know, but a lot of people are saying that Sam is here to replace Bixby. But if you ask me, I don't think she's real, it could be just a 3D mascot and not an AI avatar of any sort. 
Well, that's because Samsung didn't mention anything about the existence of this, Sam hasn't been used in any commercial products or advertisement campaigns, nor Samsung has dropped any hints that they’ll be replacing Bixby.
Technically, Sam does exist but in the form of a technical support chatbot in limited countries such as Belgium. Currently, it is in the form of a 2D image representing the bot. So it's possible this 3D Sam is created by the imagination of the designer and this isn't an official thing at all. But then again, lightfarm said Cheil is one of their collaborators for the project. Cheil is an advertising firm under the Samsung group so I'm not totally ruling out the possibility either.
So if this is indeed a real thing and the possibilities are slim but still if it's real then I don't think it's here to replace Bixby. Instead, it might replace this 2D technical support chatbot Sam which means even if this turns out to be real, it may not come to our Samsung smartphones. It's also possible that Samsung may reach out to lightfarm and announce a partnership and could use this 3D character for their future advertising videos, and who knows Sam could also end up as one of a Neon character, an Artificial Human technology, offering real-time interactive conversational experience. So you never know. Until Samsung doesn't come out and say anything about it, consider it just a 3D mascot.
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