Samsung’s Ballie robot launches in the US ‘this Summer’ with Gemini in tow

After years of teasing, Samsung is finally gearing up to launch its Ballie robot “this Summer,” with the company teaming up with Google to leverage Gemini on the helpful home robot.

Samsung first showed off Ballie in early 2020, but the project has been delayed and reimagined in the years since. At CES 2024, the company showed off the updated design of Ballie, and has now committed to a “Summer” 2025 release.

In a post this week, Samsung says that Ballie is launching in the US and Korea “this Summer,” but the other big piece of news here is that Samsung is teaming up with Google to use Gemini and Google’s cloud services on this robot. That comes as minimal surprise given Samsung and Google’s tight partnership around AI on Galaxy smartphones, but it’s still a notable partnership.

Samsung says that Ballie will leverage Gemini’s multimodal features to assist with prompts such as “Hey Ballie, how do I look?” In that case, Ballie can use Gemini to process an image of the user and then respond with recommendations. Samsung explains:

Ballie will use Gemini’s multimodal capabilities along with proprietary Samsung language models to process and understand a variety of inputs, including audio and voice, visual data from its camera, and sensor data from its environment. This will allow it to adapt its behaviors and responses in real-time. For instance, if you’re not sure what to wear to work in the morning, you can turn to Ballie for advice. Users could ask, “Hey Ballie, how do I look?” and Ballie can respond with styling recommendations, such as trying new accessories or adding a colorful shirt.

Another example Samsung offers is the prompt “I feel tired today,” to which Ballie would apparently leverage Gemini and Search to offer recommendations such as exercise, sleeping environment improvements, and details on how to monitor sleep patterns.

Early last year, Samsung showed some of Ballie’s capabilities, including using a built-in projector to show videos, answering phone calls, playing music, and even monitoring pets while the owner is away from home.

More on Gemini:

• Google announces ‘Workspace Flows’ automation with Gems, audio in Docs, and more Gemini 
• Gemini can be the biggest AI platform so long as Google integrates it in more areas [Video]
• Gemini Live widely rolling out camera & screen sharing on Pixel 9, S25 series

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