Meta has acquired another company in the field of artificial intelligence. According to Bloomberg, Meta has reached an agreement to purchase PlayAI, a company that offers advanced voice AI capabilities. Reportedly, all members of PlayAI will join Meta next week.
After joining Meta, the PlayAI team will likely operate under the supervision of Johan Schalkwijk, the former head of AI research at Google. PlayAI’s tools are capable of recreating users’ voices and generating new human-like voices that can be used in websites, apps, and smartphones.
Internal memos at Meta reveal that acquiring PlayAI could significantly benefit other divisions of the company, such as Meta AI and its wearable devices. The purchase price of PlayAI has not yet been disclosed.
Last month, Meta also purchased a 49% stake in ScaleAI for $15 billion in order to hire its CEO, Alexander Wang. ScaleAI operates in the data intelligence space.
Meta, which owns Instagram, is not afraid to poach employees from its competitors and has even offered bonuses of up to $100 million. Many former employees of Google, Apple, and OpenAI are now working at Meta.
