Facebook has announced the acquisition of the speech recognition start-up Wit.ai. Although future plans have not been unveiled, Facebook commended the company on its ability to “turn speech and text into actionable data”. It says that the existing Wit.ai platform would continue to exist.
Analysts predict that Facebook is eager to move into voice messaging, with some even suspecting it may have plans to become involved in voice control of home appliances. A number of messaging companies have already attempted to connect their apps to devices, with Tencent’s We Chat being just one example. Facebook’s huge reach would appear to give it a significant edge over firms like Sonos.
It’s thought that the resulting service would be comparable to Siri or Skype. Wit.ai released a statement, saying “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.”
Whilst the deal has been confirmed, Facebook did not disclose the amount that it paid, although the company did say “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.”
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