The social media giant Facebook is reportedly ready to make an announcement regarding its own video chat device called Portal next week with an aim to take on Amazon’s smart home devices.
With this new launch, the company will give a fight to Amazon’s Echo Show. It will be available in two variants where the larger variant could be priced at around $400, while a smaller variant could go for around $300.
However, it will have connection with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant and let users watch videos, play music, see cooking recipes, and much more.
The report said that Facebook had originally planned to announce Portal at its annual F8 developer conference in May “But the company’s scandals, including the Cambridge Analytica data breach and the bombshell revelation that Russia used the platform to interfere with the 2016 elections, led executives to shelve the announcement at the last minute”.
Along with this, Portal will also feature a privacy shutter that can cover the device’s wide-angle video camera and will most probably use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to recognize people in the frame and follow them as they move around the room.