Facebook video gets AI
Facebook on Monday launched a range of videocalling devices powered by artificial intelligence (AI), a strategic revolution for the social network giant, which is aiming for a slice of a smart speaker market dominated by Amazon and Google.
Facebook on Monday launched a range of video-calling devices powered by artificial intelligence (AI), a strategic revolution for the social network giant, which is aiming for a slice of a smart speaker market dominated by Amazon and Google.
“It’s been a big shift for the company,” Facebook’s vicepresident of consumer hardware, Andrew Bosworth, said before the launch of “Portal”.
“We’ve seen a rise of video calling, on both Messenger and WhatsApp; it has been a tremendous trend,” he said.
But the launch of a product putting a camera into people’s homes is likely to raise privacy issues for Facebook, which has suffered major data breaches this year involving tens of millions of user accounts.
The device, which will be available for pre-order in the US from Monday, is designed to allow users to make video calls at home without having to stand immediately in front of the screen or hold a phone at arm’s length. Although Facebook acquired virtual reality headset manufacturer Oculus in 2014, this is the first time it has developed a consumer hardware product in-house.
“At some point, we realised that if we want to continue to advance our mission, the hardware we’re dealing with ... is limiting, and so we find ourselves building our own hardware to try and accomplish that mission,” Bosworth said.
Offering hands-free voice control, Portal comes in two sizes, a 10-inch screen which retails at $199 and a 15-inch version will go for $349.
During calls, it can play music on Spotify or videos from Facebook Watch, as well as tell children stories via Story Time. It comes bundled with Amazon’s voice interface Alexa, enabling users to shop or control household appliances.
During a conversation, the integrated camera can automatically zoom out to include a second person, or be instructed to follow a certain individual as they walk, even picking out their voice over background noise.
The company worked with a US film director in order to make the camera movements feel natural, said Nick Fell, marketing director for Facebook’s Portal team.
Facebook has moved to quickly allay security fears, saying that by keeping the processes on the actual device rather than in the cloud, the risk of hacking is lower than with a smartphone or computer.
Calls will be encrypted, and the AI technology runs locally on Portal, not on Facebook servers, with it only sending voice commands to the servers after hearing, “Hey Portal”.
The camera can be blocked by a cover and the device has a button for disabling both the lens and the microphone.
There were 17-billion video calls made on Messenger in 2017, double the number in 2016, according to official data.
More than 60-million people in the US will use wireless speakers in 2018, and the figure is expected to rise to 76.5million by 2020, according to eMarketer.
But analysts reacted cautiously to the announcement.
“Facebook is a little bit late to the market for smart speakers,” said Tom Morrod, a research director for consumer electronics and telecoms at IHS Markit.
“They’re going to find that selling hardware scales quite differently from selling platform services.”
FACEBOOK IS A BIT LATE TO THE SMART SPEAKER MARKET. SELLING HARDWARE SCALES QUITE DIFFERENTLY FROM PLATFORM SERVICE