digital voice assistant

First Siri and then Alexa, followed by a few other voice assistants, including Google Assistant, Cortana and Bixby, have made their own space among people. Now in the same course, Facebook is also about to launch its own AI-based digital voice assistant. The company, too, has confirmed the news that it will be soon introducing a new voice assistant for its AR and VR lineup.

“We are working to develop voice and AI assistant technologies that may work across our family of AR/VR products including Portal, Oculus and future products.” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

According to a former Facebook employee, the company has been working on the voice assistant for its augmented reality and virtual reality division for a year now. The team of developers, for this new product, is led by Ira Snyder, director of AR/VR and Facebook Assistant, and the team is based out of Redmond, Washington.

It is expected that the voice assistant is especially being built for the AR, VR products including the Oculus headsets as well as the company’s Portal video chat device.

This is not the first time that the company is trying its hands in the field of voice assistant production. But, in 2015, Facebook had launched a voice assistant for its messenger named as ‘M’. The product could not sustain for long as despite offering the users smart suggestions, it required human help to run.

Even though the company has been working on its voice assistant for a year, it is still way behind the digital voice assistants by the other tech giants. But according to the company, its voice assistant will focus more on the products that can handle hands-free interactions. This way the genre of Facebook’s voice assistants may not be similar to Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri.