Facebook Video Chat Device ‘Portal’ is launching Next Week

According to a new Cheddar report, Facebook will unveil its video chat device ‘Portal’ by next week. The device will be publically announced by next week but it must be noted that Facebook has not responded to a comment request.

When a Facebook spokesperson was asked to comment, he said that the company does not “comment on rumour and speculation.”

to connect to Netflix, Spotify, and other streaming services.

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The Facebook device can be compared to Amazon’s Echo Show so much so that the Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant is being relied upon by Facebook for voice control. Voice commands will be part of Facebook Portal similar to Amazon’s Echo Show.

Portal will have a superior image recognition technology that will enable it to recognize the people that are in front of the camera. Artificial Intelligence is used not just to recognize the people and follow them as they move around. Facebook’s social networking data is used for video chat and other social features.

There will be two screen size options available for Portal with the price $300 and $400 respectively. Now Amazon Echo is being sold for $230, much lower that Portal’s reported price. Initially, Facebook had planned to launch Portal at its f8 developer conference in May 2018 but then decided to delay it due to the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.