Facebook Acquires Top Voice Recognition Startup

This article originally appeared on 60 Second Social.

Wit.ai, a startup founded 18 months ago, has been acquired by Facebook with the intent for the company to help the social network create an API for building voice controlled interfaces. Facebook could potentially work with the Wit.ai team to create voice controlled tools such as voice-to-text input for their messenger app.

Wit.ai boasts a team of 6,000 developers who have collectively built hundreds of apps. What separates them from similar developers is the platform the company has created which allows developers to add a few lines of code to instantly build speech recognition into an application.

Wit.ai had the following to say about the acquisition.

“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.”

Voice recognition is becoming more important to apps, especially with wearable technology becoming more popular. The acquisition could signal that Facebook is starting to make moves towards voice commands for their apps. For now, all we can do is wait and see.

About The Author

Mark is the founder of 60 Second Social media where he provides social media news and digital marketing analysis, he is also a proud father of his bearded dragon, Lola. You can follow him on Twitter here. You can also follow 60 Second Social on Twitter here.