IFA

Fact check on the Samsung TV

Is what he said really true? And how did my favorite team actually play? In future, Samsung TVs will answer questions like these on the side.

Sep 6, 2025 at 9:18 pm CEST

3 min. read

c't Magazin

By

Ulrike Kuhlmann

When politicians say something on a talk show and you have the feeling that the statement is not true, you quickly pull out your cell phone. With Samsung's new "AI Companion", you can now leave the second screen behind and ask questions directly on the TV display instead. The Companion is also useful if you want to know more about an athlete's previous clubs or the opponent's performance during a sports broadcast. Or if you're watching a movie and want to know what roles the leading actress has played in other films.

If you have called up the Perplexity AI via Bixby, the stream remains active in a small window, the answer appears above it and further video suggestions on the topic are displayed next to the active window.

Samsung has provided three AI models for the answers: Perplexity, Google Gemini, and Microsoft's Copilot. Gemini is directly connected to Samsung's voice assistant, Bixby: if you press the AI button on the remote control, a window opens with suggestions for using the intelligent companion on the big screen. The TV program or stream continues to run in a smaller window.

If you want to know more, click on the "more" button and you will get a detailed answer, but it will hide the stream.

You can then ask the Google AI Gemini questions via Bixby and promptly receive a detailed answer. The current stream also remains active in the small window. As usual, you can also continue to ask questions from here; the functionality is then similar to that on a smartphone or PC.

Microsoft's Copilot and the Perplexity AI, on the other hand, are integrated as apps under the Smart TV interface. If you call them up, you leave the current stream, and the AI fills the entire screen. For a quick fact check, you are therefore more likely to stick with Gemini.

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Tried out

We were able to try out the integration of the new function at the IFA stand: The chatbot on the TV recognized our questions well, answered quite extensively, just like on a PC or smartphone, and also suggested further questions on the topic. At IFA, recognition was preset to English, but the AIs in Samsung TVs will also support German.

The AI Companion will run in the 2025 TV models from the Neo QLED series Q7, the Micro LED TVs, the OLEDs and The Frame. The AI is also to be integrated into the M7, M8 and M9 smart monitors. It remains to be seen whether older models will also receive an update at a later date.

To keep streams running during queries in the small window, Samsung requires the metadata of the TV channels; this can also be metadata from online channels such as Samsung's TV Plus.

Samsung requires the associated metadata from the provider for the AI queries in the live image. Samsung can therefore currently place the picture from live TV channels such as ARD and ZDF, Samsung's own online TV service "TV Plus" and the channels from set-top boxes connected via HDMI next to the AI responses. In the future, however, it should also be possible to display them alongside the stream for Netflix & Co. This is currently being worked on, a Samsung spokesperson told c't.