Facebook has announced that it has acquired Wit.ai, a startup that creates voice activated user interfaces. It’s obvious that Facebook has done this acquisition so that they can integrate this technology on their own platform.
Imagine being able to voice command your messenger and instruct it to send texts electronically. That’s old stuff you complain. But wait till you hear this, What about having to voice instruct FB messenger! Now that’s what we call the next gen revolution.
In a green signal to this proposition and a win-win deal, Facebook acquired Wit.ai, which is also a Menlo Park head quartered company. Wit.ai is a startup that was featured in the Techcrunch’s list of best startups. Incepted less than 2 years ago, Wit.ai has been earning laurels in building voice-activated user interfaces. As a part of the deal, Facebook will use Wit.ai’s witty resources in helping transforming the way we would otherwise text on FB into voice-activated text commands.
Having built many apps that involve the usage of voice recognition and control, Wit.ai was quoted saying, “Facebook has the resources and talent to help us take the next step. Facebook’s mission is to connect everyone and build amazing experiences for the over 1.3 billion people on the platform- technology that understands natural language is a big part of that and we think we can help.” Impressed by the startup’s progress, Wit.ai received $3 million funding from various big names in the VC industry such as Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, New enterprise Associates and now of course it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s turn.
Another reason why FB will flaunt this deal is because Wit.ai’s speech recognition is rumoured to be much better than Apple’s Siri and Microsoft. Facebook did not fail to mention it too, “Wit.ai has built an incredible yet simple natural language processing API that has helped developers turn speech and text into actionable data. We’re excited to have them on board.” With natural speech processing, it could definitely enhance the user experience of Facebook. With the machine enabled to understand human language, the day’s not far, people will even forget the qwerty keypads!
It’s just not Facebook that has been obsessed with speech recognition and artificial intelligence, Skype released their new version of “in the conversation”, translating service wherein two different languages can be easily interpreted and re-communicated to the user on the other line within seconds of uttering words. This makes communication flawless and less time consuming.
However Facebook wants to create an app that works on voice simulation and wants to also make the whole navigating process, voice controlled. Now how cool is that! Another thing about Wit.ai’s voice apps is it’s deadly accuracy. The app also doesn’t consume much time and unlike other apps, voice recognition happens in a snap. With many wearable devices circulating in the market, the luxury of typing can’t be provided, voice propelled commands are a necessity.
The only wait is to actually experience the handsfree FB app, sure typing will be a thing of past!