If there is one benefit that has come out of recent technological innovations, it’s that incredibly introverted and geeky boys like Darryn can now have regular conversations with girls. Admittedly these girls are mostly names like Siri, Alexa, Cortana or Hey Google, but that response of a female’s voice not tuning them down when they try to talk has got to be a confidence booster.
Soon though, people may have another soothing voice to talk to as Facebook has confirmed that they too are busy working on an artificial intelligence-based digital voice assistant of their own (reported by CNBC) for their AR/VR products like Portal, Oculus and other unnamed future projects. This time around, however, Facebook says it is focusing less on messaging and more on platforms in which hands-free interaction, via voice control and potentially gesture control, is paramount. Meaning Facebook is not trying to compete with the other AI voice services directly, but sees this as more of a feature exclusive to its growing family of hardware devices.
Facebook has dabbled with an AI assistant before with its Messenger platform called M. That experiment though proved unsuccessful, though considering Messenger itself is not fantastic to use, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise. This time around, if they can focus on perfecting communication through their more successful hardware devices, they stand a chance of better success and differentiate themselves from the rest.
According to the CNBC report, the project has been in the works since early 2018 and has a team building the assistant under the direction Ira Snyder, a general manager at Facebook Reality Labs and a director of augmented and virtual reality at the company. It’s not clear exactly when Facebook plans to release this new tech or exactly what people will be calling it to get its attention, but it does appear as if tech companies are rapidly expanding their AI communication capabilities.
That way, our Skynet future can at least have a friendly voice to it as it eradicates humanity.
Last Updated: April 18, 2019
