In it’s current state M doesn’t use any data from Facebook profiles, but later on it’s possible the assistant will, “at some point, with proper user consent”, according to David Marcus, vice president of messaging products at Facebook in an interview with Wired. The software was debuted today under the name “M”, and will be available in a very limited release to users in the Bay Area starting today.
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So, whereas Siri will tell you a great place to order gifts, make restaurant reservations, etc., M will enable users to complete the order within the app. This will likely be assisted by Facebook already having plenty of users’ payment details through the Facebook Payments scheme. It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more. So you are getting a mix of AI and also some human interaction or help.
Meanwhile, there are several other companies looking to corner the AI-assistant market, including x.ai, viv, and Operator, all of which could be competing with Facebook for space on users’ home screens.
“This is early in the journey to build M into an at-scale service”, Marcus said on Facebook.
Furthering Facebook’s quest to manage every aspect of your life from remembering acquaintances’ birthdays right down to comparing your relative life success against the rest of your high school graduating class, they’re now joining Siri, Cortana, and Google Now in the realm of AI assistants. The trainers will have a customer service background and part of the aim is to help out its users in ways that companies haven’t been able to offer.
If enough cable subscribers start using M to make those support calls, so they don’t have to wait on hold, that might be indication that they need to have a presence within Messenger. It can also be both, with a human stepping in to complete more complicated tasks where AI might fail.
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What seems to separate M from its competitors, however, is that you can type in natural language without asking questions in a formal way.
