Facebook Has Acquired a Voice Recognition Startup, Should Siri and Google Now Be Worried?

Facebook Inc has acquired a speech-to-text startup Wit.ai. The service can translate spoken works into usable data, similar to Google's Google Now and Apple's Siri. Service of Wit.ai can also be added to existing mobile apps.

"Wit.ai has built an incredible yet simple natural language processing API that has helped developers turn speech and text into actionable data," a Facebook spokesperson said. "We're excited to have them onboard."

"Facebook has the resources and talent to help us take the next step," Wit.ai said in a blog post. "Facebook's mission is to connect everyone and build amazing experiences for the over 1.3 billion people on the platform -- technology that understands natural language is a big part of that, and we think we can help."

The intent of the acquisition is pretty clear as Facebook wants to make its presence felt in the speech recognition department as well. Apple's Siri and Google's Google Now are one of the major selling points of the devices. Microsoft is also trying to do same with its own voice recognition service Cortana.

Speech recognition could be a big thing for mobile markets. It is easier to dictate the phone than type long messages.

The voice recognition startup Wit.ai was founded 18 months ago and has more than 6,000 developers using its platform.