{"id":135985,"date":"2019-05-07T19:07:28","date_gmt":"2019-05-07T19:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=135985"},"modified":"2025-07-01T22:01:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T05:01:02","slug":"facebook-voice-assistant-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/facebook-voice-assistant-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook launches voice assistant to fight Siri\/Alexa"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Zuckerberg\"<\/p>\n

Facebook is cooking up a new digital assistant to compete with Alexa, Siri, and Google. The tech giant\u2019s Redmond, WA team has been working on the project since last year and is currently working on building the vendor relationships needed to bring the project to life.<\/p>\n

This latest digital assistant is FB\u2019s second foray into the space \u2014 remember 2015\u2019s M? The company also started selling Portal<\/a>, its video chat device, which uses Alexa to handle more complicated tasks.<\/p>\n

What do we know about Facebook\u2019s new AI?<\/h2>\n

Facebook killed off M last year.\u00a0It never really took off, and according to The Verge, the assistant needed a lot of assistance from its users<\/a>. The company is switching things up this time around. Where M was all about messaging, Facebook says the new project is more about \u201chands-free interaction\u201d through voice, of course, but potentially gesture control.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Facebook spokesperson told Reuters<\/a> that the company is developing \u201cvoice and AI assistant technologies\u201d designed to work with Oculus, Portal, and future products.<\/p>\n

The AI tech will go into the line of Portal displays launched late last year, replacing Alexa as the device\u2019s voice-activated digital assistant. What they haven\u2019t mentioned, however, is how people can use the tool. It might turn the Portal into an actual competitor for Google Home and Amazon Echo.<\/p>\n

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5 things Google Home does better than Alexa<\/p>\r\n Read now<\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n

Can it save the Portal?<\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s the thing; Facebook continues to make headlines for privacy violations.<\/p>\n

So, when the Facebook Portal launched, the irony of a Facebook-powered video chat camera certainly wasn’t lost on reviewers.<\/p>\n

The Portal and Portal+ are priced outside of the Google Home and Amazon Echo baseline. Now, Facebook\u2019s smart speaker\/screen can stream video, music, and learn Alexa skills, and it\u2019s a pretty reliable home assistant tool.<\/p>\n

But entry-level Portals are half-off right now \u2014 through May 12, you can get one for $99<\/a>.<\/p>\n

TechCrunch chalks a lot of the Portal\u2019s problems to poor timing<\/a>. Amid these egregious privacy violations, why launch a device with a video camera and microphone?<\/p>\n

The biggest problem, though, might be the assistant. You can say, \u201chey Portal\u201d and set up a call, but it doesn\u2019t help with anything else. Instead, it passes the buck to Alexa.<\/p>\n

Back to the timing issue \u2014 maybe they should have waited to launch Portal when they had a built-in assistant of their own.<\/p>\n

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7 fun things to try with Amazon Alexa<\/p>\r\n Read Now \u25ba<\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n

Portal privacy\u2014is it an issue?<\/h2>\n

As though they read our minds, Facebook has created a friendly privacy policy page that details how, exactly, the Portal is absolutely NOT spying on you. They swear.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that Facebook isn\u2019t the only company that oversteps when it comes to privacy concerns. Consider all of the reported Alexa incidents, including this Bloomberg report that Amazon employs actual humans to listen to users\u2019 questions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Alexa\u2019s software is designed to record bits of audio, listening for the wake word. The idea is, Alexa reviewers transcribe user commands, comparing how Alexa\u2019s responses in the wild compare with her automated transcript \u2014 the goal here is to find out if Alexa delivers an adequate response.<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s problem is, perhaps, the tone deafness that comes through as they navigate this fake news, data breach landscape. They keep saying, \u201ctrust us\u201d and talk about positive interactions and so on, but keep messing up.<\/p>\n

Portal, does collect data about your calls \u2014 frequency, call length, the apps you use, and so on. But, they don\u2019t record the contents of the call.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Facebook\u2019s future plans could eliminate all your privacy<\/p>\r\n Read Now \u25ba<\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n

Wrapping up<\/h2>\n

In the end, the voice assistant stands to be a formidable competitor for Siri and Alexa \u2014 if the company can regain at least some of the public\u2019s trust.<\/p>\n

If they can pull that off, a digital assistant might bring more value to the Portal. And, it\u2019s a step toward a new, AI-powered Facebook, as the company adds more hardware devices to the mix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Would you trust Facebook’s new digital assistant?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9161,"featured_media":137549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[2353,1059],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-135985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-app-subdomain-redirectionfacebook","tag-facebook"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326131,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135985\/revisions\/326131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135985"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=135985"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=135985"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=135985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}