Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Smart Home
  3. News

Oh, Zuck, no! Facebook rumored to be creating a voice assistant to rival Alexa

Clayton Moore
By

Facebook, the way you keep in touch with your mom and keep tabs on that ex or the thing you quit like five years ago, is reportedly working on a voice-activated digital assistant to rival competitors like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and the Google Assistant.

This comes by means of CNBC, which was reportedly informed by “people familiar with the matter.” Facebook, like Apple, Google, and Amazon, is famously secretive, so take the news with a grain of salt.

Recommended Videos

Reports say that the social media giant has been working on the new initiative since 2018, and that the effort is emerging from the company’s relatively newly acquired augmented reality and virtual reality group — this is the AR and VR division that develops and promotes, among other futuristic stuff, the Oculus VR headset.

Related

According to two former Facebook employees who have since left the company, the initiative is spearheaded by a team based out of Redmond, Washington, led by Ira Snyder, the director of AR/VR and Facebook Assistant. They’re also reportedly talking to a bunch of vendors in the smart speaker market, which could present a huge challenge given how far ahead A.I.-ish gizmos like Amazon’s Alexa have gotten, not to mention the giant investment that Google has made in language technology.

Still, Facebook has a whole bunch of platforms where it could employ the new digital buddy, including the fancy new Facebook Portal video chat speaker as well as the Oculus headsets that are rumored to be mainstream soon, plus whatever other idea Zuckerberg’s army has cooked up.

If the report is true, Facebook will be playing catch-up: Amazon has already captured nearly 70 percent of the smart speaker market, with Google carrying the other 30 percent. Siri lives on the iPhone, but Apple’s HomePod hasn’t really taken off.

Facebook has been interested in conversational A.I.-driven products for some time, though not with quite the paroxysm and money that Google has invested. Facebook’s most current public venture has been M, a suggestion-oriented wingding that can hail an Uber, translate conversations, and connect you with apps like Spotify or Food Network if you reference a song or recipe. Facebook has been quietly acquiring companies in this market for a while including the AI assistant startup Ozlo in 2017.

Facebook is scheduled to hold its annual F8 developer conference at the end of April, so we’ll keep you posted if we hear of anything else.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Clayton Moore
Clayton Moore
Contributor
Clayton Moore’s interest in technology is deeply rooted in the work of writers like Warren Ellis, Cory Doctorow and Neal…
A new survey by Adobe shows an evolving market for voice applications
voice assistants arent ready assistant mem2

Surveys are rarely a perfect distillation of technology’s role in society but a new survey conducted by Adobe Analytics does contain some revelatory clues about voice-controlled devices and applications that could prove quite useful to developers and manufacturers of these products.

The methodology of Adobe’s surveys is pretty straightforward for these kinds of reports: They query more than 1,000 U.S. consumers, all of whom are required to have at least one digital device (read: smartphone or tablet) and be over the age of 18. The survey uncovered five top findings, and the data that inspired those findings is pretty interesting as well.

Read more
UN finds voice assistants aren’t helping combat sexist gender stereotypes
Apple Homepod

Your voice assistant of choice probably has a female-sounding voice. While you may not think much of it, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) believes the A.I.-powered assistants may be reinforcing negative gender stereotypes while also failing to properly rebuff violent and abusive language, leading to some potentially harmful outcomes.

In a paper titled "I’d blush if I could," researchers from UNESCO explored some of the implicit biases that take place in artificial intelligence research. The paper's authors suggest that by giving voice assistants traditionally female names and assigning them female-sounding voices by default, companies have unintentionally reinforced negative and regressive ideas about women. It positions them as subservient and in a role where they are expected to do what is asked of them.

Read more
LG’s 2019 TVs slide Alexa next to Google Assistant, with Siri on the way
lg 2019 tv alexa google assistant siri amazon 02

LG announced that its 2019 ThinQ A.I. TVs will eventually support all three major voice assistants, in one form or another. Currently, these TVs embed LG's own proprietary A.I. and the Google Assistant, but starting this month, Alexa will be added to 2019 ThinQ A.I. TVs, including LG UHD TVs, NanoCell TVs, and OLED TVs. TVs in North America will be the first to receive the update, with Europe and Asia getting it in the weeks to follow.

Using Alexa on an LG TV will require the Alexa app on a smartphone or tablet, for account creation and the management of skills and other preferences, plus the TV's remote. To talk to Alexa, you press and hold the Amazon Prime Video button, while a short press will still launch the Amazon Prime Video app. There's no need for an external speaker, like an Echo Dot, and Alexa routines will be supported, too.

Read more