After Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google’s Voice Assistant, Facebook is also ready to launch its own voice assistant, as per the recent report.
Since the beginning of 2018, this project is under progress by the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) team by Facebook, a team that not only works on the hardware but also VR Oculus Headsets for the company.
Two former employees of the company, who recently left jobs, have leaked the news that a team has been allocated to build a new AI assistant to be launched for the platform. Ira Snyder, who is the AR/VR and Facebook Assistant is leading this team. Also, smart speaker supply chain vendors are being contacted for assistance in the project.
However, it is not yet clear how the assistant will be used by Facebook. Though it is guessed that it could be used on the Portal video chat device, on the Oculus headsets or with the new projects that the tech giant is working on.
According to statistics, Amazon and Google have a huge share in the smart speaker market of the US with 67% and 30% shares. This indicates that Facebook will be having a tough competition with the introduction of an assistant.
Facebook has already tried the AI assistant back in 2015 for its Messenger app, known as "M". Though "M" was supposed to assist users with smart suggestions but was hugely dependent on human help.
In November, the company started selling a Portal video chat device that allowed users to make video calls using their Facebook Messenger. For simple command execution, users only had to start by saying ‘Hey, Portal”. However, for the complex tasks, Amazon’s Alexa assistant is used, which the device is already equipped with.
Read next: Facebook Messenger Gives its Automated Assistant 'M' a New Onboarding Page
Since the beginning of 2018, this project is under progress by the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) team by Facebook, a team that not only works on the hardware but also VR Oculus Headsets for the company.
Two former employees of the company, who recently left jobs, have leaked the news that a team has been allocated to build a new AI assistant to be launched for the platform. Ira Snyder, who is the AR/VR and Facebook Assistant is leading this team. Also, smart speaker supply chain vendors are being contacted for assistance in the project.
However, it is not yet clear how the assistant will be used by Facebook. Though it is guessed that it could be used on the Portal video chat device, on the Oculus headsets or with the new projects that the tech giant is working on.
- Also read: Facebook is finally rolling out its dedicated News Tab (currently, only visible to beta tester)
According to statistics, Amazon and Google have a huge share in the smart speaker market of the US with 67% and 30% shares. This indicates that Facebook will be having a tough competition with the introduction of an assistant.
Facebook has already tried the AI assistant back in 2015 for its Messenger app, known as "M". Though "M" was supposed to assist users with smart suggestions but was hugely dependent on human help.
In November, the company started selling a Portal video chat device that allowed users to make video calls using their Facebook Messenger. For simple command execution, users only had to start by saying ‘Hey, Portal”. However, for the complex tasks, Amazon’s Alexa assistant is used, which the device is already equipped with.
Read next: Facebook Messenger Gives its Automated Assistant 'M' a New Onboarding Page
