The rise in the popularity of virtual assistants has been dominated by Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa. Now, as the brewing war of Apple with Facebook continues, the latter also plans to match the rival's feature with their "Hey Facebook" for Oculus VR platform Portal.

'Hey Facebook' Will be Your Newest Companion in Facebook's Platforms

According to a blog written on the official Oculus site of Facebook on February 25, the social media company said that it did not figure out a way to interact with virtual reality over the past years.

Before, commands could only be enabled through the use of the hands, and voice. It is also possible through the Oculus Touch controllers.

Midway 2020, Facebook has included the voice commands in the Oculus Quest, so players could use it without using their fingers. The feature can be seen in the home menu or by clicking the controller button twice, before instructing it.

Those who use Oculus Quest can now enjoy an experience without using their hands. They could just simply say the voice command "Hey Facebook."

Commands like screenshot requests or the capability to show to the user who is online among his/her friends are now accessible. This hand-free advantage will not anymore allow you to scroll endlessly to contents you want to see or to know.

It also lets the users use the game controllers without touching the touchpads so it is fully generated only by the mouth. You can also save your game without the need to peruse all your hidden files.

Furthermore, you can also say "Hey Portal" to command Facebook's smart devices. "Hey Facebook" is just similar to other voice-recognition features that other tech companies developed.

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Facebook came up with this idea to provide more convenience to the users, so upon pronouncing the command, the devices will pick up the recording and later transcribe what the user says.

In addition, the California-based conglomerate is not mandatory in operation. It is disabled at first, so you have to opt whether to use it or not depending on your preference.

According to the company, the Portal will keep on receiving commands until you turn off the microphone.

There is also an indicator that will appear at the bottom of the screen when the device recognizes a wake command. This is where the two processes of recording and transcribing begin.

Another Hint of Privacy Concerns

In a report by 9To5Mac,  despite its amazing voice-command capability, concerns about privacy still keep on accumulating around Facebook. Most likely, users have been careful about their data which is being collected without their permission.

Compared to Apple's voice assistant Siri, the company assured that their devices will not collect any data from the users through their Apple servers. For those users who have used Siri, the commands can be spoken even offline. This is because Apple constructed an AI that is programmed in the devices' chips.

Facebook said that "Hey Facebook" will be launched first on Oculus Ques 2 before becoming available to all Quest devices this week. The rest of the features will be announced soon.

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This article is owned by Tech Times.

Written by Joen Coronel