Although Samsung has yet to widely roll out One UI 8.5 to its devices, leaks about One UI 9 have already started to pour in. The Android 17-based software is expected to debut with the company’s summer lineup of foldables, which will also include a separate wide-screen foldable.
Thanks to an early One UI 9 build that’s making the rounds online, multiple sources have dissected it to uncover details about the software. While most of the info revealed so far has been about upcoming Samsung hardware, we’re now getting our first glimpse of a new feature for your Galaxy phone’s default browser.
Looking into the One UI 9 build we referenced above, Android Authority has uncovered evidence of a tool called “Ask AI” for Samsung Internet. In addition to lines of code detailing some of its elements, the site also found a couple of illustrations of the feature.
Our first glimpse of ‘Ask AI’
Not long after this leak, the folks at SammyGuru took things a step further by going hands-on with Ask AI, providing a detailed first look at this upcoming feature. While the browser already offers some AI tools, particularly through Browsing assist, strings indicate that Ask AI could be merged with the existing crop of AI functions.
What’s interesting is that this Ask AI experience within Samsung Internet appears to be powered by Perplexity. The AI giant is also set to be involved in an updated version of Bixby landing with One UI 8.5, so this isn’t particularly surprising.
Illustrations of Samsung Internet’s ‘Ask AI’ feature
So what exactly can Ask AI do? Well, it lets you type in questions about a specific webpage, just like you would on an AI chatbot. There are also shortcuts to Summarize, Translate, and Read highlights aloud, which are already available as part of Browsing assist. The idea could be to make some of these common options easily accessible, with the chatbot serving as a fallback for any other queries.
In the video shared by SammyGuru’s Josh Skinner, we see the responses appearing reasonably quickly. Users can also review their older conversations, with Samsung letting users choose how long it stores Ask AI activity. The two options available at the moment are Session only and 6 months. There’s also a toggle to disable this feature entirely if you’re not interested.
It’s worth remembering that this is an early look at Ask AI, and Samsung could make some changes to the experience by the time the first One UI 9 betas roll out. However, based on what we see here, it appears pretty refined as it is.
What do you make of this feature?
