There's no shortage of voice assistants on the market — Apple has Siri, Google has the Assistant, and Amazon has Alexa, among others — but that apparently isn't stopping Facebook from working on its own assistant.
Facebook is working on a new voice assistant and has been plugging away at it since early 2018. That's according to a report from CNBC, which claims that Facebook's augmented reality and virtual reality group is working on the AI-powered assistant in Redmond, WA.
Details on the Facebook digital assistant's features or launch timing are still up in the air. Facebook did recently launch a pair of smart display devices called Portal and Portal+, and so it's possible that Facebook could add its assistant to those products. The Facebook Portal currently use Amazon's Alexa assistant for tasks like asking questions, checking the news and weather, controlling smart home devices, and more.
Voice assistants have been rising in popularity in recent years as they gain more features and become better at conversing and answering questions. Because of that, it's no surprise that Facebook is interested in making its own voice assistant. There are already quite a few established voice assistants on the market, though, so it might be tough for a new Facebook assistant to gain traction with consumers.
