San Francisco, April 18: In a bid to take on Amazon Alexa or Google Home, Facebook is working on a voice-based assistant for its Portal video chat service and other future projects. According to a report in CNBC on Wednesday, the social network is "unclear how exactly Facebook envisions people using the assistant". Facebook's AI-enabled Portal video chat service currently uses Amazon's Alexa. Facebook Testing to Merge News Feed, Stories Like Snapchat and Instagram.

"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 said in a statement.

Facebook last year shut down a chat-based assistant called "M" in its messaging app. According to the report, Ira Snyder, a general manager at Facebook Reality Labs, is working on the voice-assistant project.

Facebook Portal and Portal+ video chat speakers come with Smart Camera and Smart Sound technology. Portal offers hands-free voice control. You can start a video call simply by saying 'Hey Portal' and noting who you'd like to call.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 18, 2019 11:54 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).