Meta is reportedly planning to amass the Palo Alto, California-based synthetic intelligence (AI) startup PlayAI. As per the report, the acquisition is geared toward bolstering its AI division to compete with the likes of OpenAI and Google. The Menlo Park-based social media large has been aggressively pushing out new AI fashions and AI options for its platforms. The reported acquisition plans might assist the corporate acquire extra staff expert in AI, in addition to the startup’s in-house expertise stack.
In keeping with a Bloomberg report, the tech large is contemplating buying PlayAI. The AI startup was based in 2019 by Hammad Syed and Mahmoud Felfel. It specialises in constructing real-time conversational brokers, voice interfaces, and in-house AI voice fashions. Citing unnamed individuals aware of the matter, the report claimed that the transfer to amass the startup comes from Meta’s need to rent high expertise within the AI area.
The acquisition deal, which is but to be finalised, reportedly additionally features a provision to rent a number of the startup’s staff. Whereas the acquisition is anticipated to be accomplished quickly, phrases can nonetheless change, claimed the report. Notably, the monetary phrases of the deal are at present not identified.
Meta seems to be actively on the lookout for AI startups to amass. A number of experiences earlier this month claimed that Mark Zuckerberg’s team held meetings with Perplexity to debate a attainable acquisition. The corporate has reportedly additionally made makes an attempt to amass Runway AI, a startup targeted on growing AI fashions for video era.
Other than including extra AI expertise to its staff, the acquisition of PlayAI may assist Meta in different methods. The social media large lately added a two-way voice dialog function to its chatbot, nevertheless, by way of finish product, it’s only a low-latency text-to-speech (TTS) device. In comparison with opponents similar to ChatGPT or Gemini, that is one space the place Meta AI is considerably behind.
Nevertheless, this will change with the acquisition of PlayAI, which specialises in constructing AI voice era fashions and voice interfaces. With this functionality, the social media large can scale up its personal AI infrastructure and supply a voice expertise that sounds extra expressive and human-like.