Facebook is working to develop a voice assistant to rival the likes of Amazon.com's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Alphabet's Google Assistant.
"We are working to develop voice and AI assistant technologies that may work across our family of AR/VR products including Portal, Oculus and future products," a Facebook spokesperson told Reuters in an e-mailed response on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, CNBC reported about the development, saying that the team behind the technology has been contacting vendors in the smart speaker supply chain.
However, it remains unclear how exactly Facebook envisions people using the assistant, but it could potentially be used on the company's Portal video chat smart speakers, the Oculus headsets or other future projects, CNBC reported.
According to research firm eMarketer, Amazon's Echo is expected to capture 63.3 percent of smart speaker users in 2019, while Google Home will account for 31 percent.
© Thomson Reuters 2019
Get your daily dose of tech news, reviews, and insights, in under 80 characters on Gadgets 360 Turbo. Connect with fellow tech lovers on our Forum. Follow us on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News for instant updates. Catch all the action on our YouTube channel.