Amid all the trouble that Facebook has been in lately in regards to privacy concerns of user accounts and sharing data without consent, a new rumor claims that Facebook might be looking into something that we already have seen too much of: Voice Assistants. It all started with Siri, followed by Google now and then every company considered it important that they should have their own voice assistants and so came in Bixby and others. The leaders of this market have undisputedly been Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant. However, Facebook plans to disrupt this market and make one of their very own.
Reportedly, Facebook has been working on this virtual assistant since early 2018, right around the time the company killed off its relatively-unknown assistant known simply as M. Facebook’s M lived solely in the Facebook Messenger service and relied mostly on humans for it to work properly, which is a far cry from the advanced machine learning natures of Alexa, Google Assistant, and others. But reports claim that Facebook is committing enough manpower to make this project a successful one and start competing with Google and Amazon’s powerhouses soon. Despite it being a long shot and several failed attempts from other companies Facebook seem rather confident of their voice assistant becoming an instant hit.
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According to CNBC, the new Facebook assistant development is led by Ira Snyder, whose title on LinkedIn refers to a “Facebook Assistant.” That team has been allegedly contacting vendors in the smart speaker supply chain, which suggests a new Portal-esque device could be on the way too, but with Facebook Assistant on board.
The privacy concerns regarding Facebook policies of handling user data would continue however, this might take their minds off of it for a while and let them focus on something other than fighting legal battles.
