The ex-employees said that Facebook is working on an AI-powered virtual aide that will be present on its Oculus VR headsets and Portal. The two also said that the company is also in touch with a number of vendors who supply smart speakers and Facebook’s project is being led by Ira Snyder, the company’s head of AR/VR division.
We should mention that this would not be the first time when Facebook would be working on a virtual assistant as the company also launched ‘M’ in 2015. However, the difference is that M was a text-based smart assistant that was aimed at improving conversations and gives users various recommendations, while the one that will be launched will have support for voice-based searches too. It is worth adding that M was closed down last year because it did not interest a lot of users and was not intuitive enough. But then, Facebook’s experience with M may benefit the company in creating the new virtual assistant, especially at a time when voice searches are really becoming a hit among users. It has also been estimated that this particular market will grow by 40% annually. Speaking on the development, Facebook said to Reuters that the AI assistant “may work across our family of AR/VR products including Portal, Oculus and future products.” It is worth adding that Facebook’s F8 developer conference will begin on April 30 this month and there is a big possibility that we may get to learn a lot more about the virtual assistant as the event.
