Meta in talks to acquire AI voice startup PlayAI, hires top OpenAI researcher for Superintelligence team
Meta is reportedly in advanced discussions to purchase PlayAI, a Palo Alto startup renowned for its AI-powered voice replication technology, according to a report by Bloomberg. The deal, which has not yet been finalised, is expected to include both PlayAI's proprietary systems and some of its engineering team. This move is part of Meta's broader drive to catch up with rivals like Google and OpenAI in key AI areas. PlayAI describes its technology as being 'responsive as a conversation between two people'. advertisementBy integrating PlayAI's voice technology, Meta could significantly enhance its AI assistant and hands-free hardware such as smart glasses. Meta recently debuted the RayBan Meta glasses in India, and also released new AI smart glasses with Oakley – more suited for active wear. There are reports that Meta is also working with Prada for a luxury fashion line of the AI smart glasses. Earlier this month, the company also invested $14.3billion in ScaleAI and brought its founder, Alexandr Wang, into its new 'superintelligence' division.Meta is also aggressively recruiting AI talent. It has recently hired three researchers from OpenAI's Zurich officeand brought in experts from Google and Sesame. These hires strengthen the company's superintelligence team alongside Wang.
Meta has recently also onboarded Trapit Bansal, who left OpenAI in June. Bansal, formerly a member of technical staff at OpenAI since early 2022, made notable contributions to their reinforcement learning efforts and was instrumental in developing the ChatGPT-o1 reasoning model alongside Ilya Sutskever.advertisementAccording to TechCrunch, his arrival at Meta boosts the company's ability to create frontier AI reasoning systems that could rival OpenAI's o3 and other industry-leading models. His move is part of a wider trend: several former OpenAI researchers, including Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, have also joined Meta's lab.Mark Zuckerberg has apparently been deeply involved in this talent acquisition strategy, reportedly offering compensation packages worth up to $100million for top-tier researchers – at least that is what OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed in a recent podcast interview. However, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has recently responded to Altman's comments saying that the statement from the OpenAI CEO was 'dishonest' and that he is 'known to exaggerate' things.- Ends
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