Facebook was revealed on Monday in Germany to be working on a way for users of its Messenger app to text friends with their voice.
David Marcus, vice president of messaging products at Facebook, said at the Digital Life Design Conference in Munich that the social networking giant has started testing voice-to-text transcription, a feature that uses machine-learning technology, according to The Wall Street Journal.
He added that he believes the feature will get a lot of attention in Asia, an area where it is difficult to type in different languages, and that Facebook was looking to Asia for ways to make money with messaging apps.
"In Asia there are messaging apps that sell content, and some in China that have whole ecosystems of commerce on the apps," Marcus said.
Another goal for Facebook, Marcus said, is to make sure ads don't interfere with what users are doing, The Wall Street Journal reported.
"We don't want to put advertising all over the place. We don't want to make the experience feel like you're being invaded by ads and different things," he said. "That's not the approach."
Marcus also pointed out in a Facebook post how the feature could come in handy when you'd rather read a text than play a voice message, such as when you're at a concert or in a group meeting, PC Magazine reported.
Making Messenger more useful to businesses is also a priority with the addition of the voice-to-text feature, as Facebook wants the app to be able to improve how companies and customers communicate with each other.
The announcement of the voice-to-text testing follows two months after Facebook revealed that Messenger had more than 500 million active users.
