Speech recognition is not a new technology and we have seen the tech being used in security systems and other authentication use cases. Facebook is now the next company to dive into this tech as it looks like they are working on a new system called Aloha.
A mobile researcher by the name of Jane Machun Wong was digging into the Facebook and Messenger Android app and found a prototype interface for speech recognition. As you can see from the video below, the feature will basically transcribe your speech into text which can be used to call up comments and possibly send a text message to your friends and family. This might sound familiar, that’s because voice recognition has already been implemented in Android keyboards like Gboard and Swift Key. Wong also discovered the logo that Facebook plans to use for this new feature and although the app is not fully released, it shows that it does a good job picking up voices and converting it into text.
Facebook Messenger Voice Assistant UI pic.twitter.com/DOMe4Nsg7v
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) August 21, 2018
Where Facebook wants to take this feature is still unsure, but we assume that they plan to implement in into both Facebook and Messenger so we can navigate, post up statuses and more. Facebook has not commented on this feature but we would expect something soon.