The Internet's bizzare obsession with “Sam,” Samsung's new virtual assistant

The following article sheds light on Samsung’s alleged new digital assistant avatar, “Sam,” and the internet’s obsession with it.

It all started when Brazil-based Lightfarm studios shared pictures of the images it had created in collaboration with the Cheil marketing agency, which is owned by Samsung. The now deleted-tweet is the only confirmation of the digital avatar, with Samsung not having yet officially commented on the matter.

Regardless, the internet, in recent days, has responded with a plethora of memes, cosplays, fan-art and other gossip about “Sam.” According to the images that have gone viral on the internet, Sam is a brown-haired woman with blue eyes and a black Samsung t-shirt.

Samsung’s unconfirmed digital avatar “Sam” goes viral on the internet

The images were created by Lightfarm studios in collaboration with the Cheil agency, owned by Samsung. Sam is already an official “virtual assistant” on the Samsung Brazil website. Multiple Reddit posts claim that Sam has been the official virtual assistant on the Samsung Brazil shop for quite some time.

However, Lightfarm studios’ animated rendition of Sam seems to have impressed the internet. While the avatar as it appears might as well end up being used in Samsung devices in the future, the company has not commented about the situation until now, despite the huge amount of interest that people have shown.

The initial tweet by Lightfarm studios had the following caption:

"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!"

Samsung currently uses the “Bixby” virtual assistant, with some fans speculating that Sam might become the new “physical avatar” of the assistant, if it does not end up replacing Bixby completely.

Regardless, as the tweets suggest, most people appeared to be impressed by Sam’s looks, with a number of cosplays, memes and jokes popping up on the internet in recent days.

As can be seen in the tweets, a number of viewers likened Sam to popular Anime and movie characters, with an entire section of “Know Your Meme” also dedicated to “Samsung Sam.” Quite a few Twitter users posted rather suggestive renditions of Sam as well. Lightfarm studios had posted a test clip of Sam that has since been deleted.

The virtual assistant also has an official YouTube account with 5.41k subscribers, although no videos have been posted as of yet.