Facebook has just launched its own digital assistant “M” in a beta testing phase to a small pool of users in Bay Area in the U.S.
M is a personal digital assistant inside of Messenger that completes tasks and finds information on your behalf, said David Marcus, head of Messenger at Facebook. It’s powered by artificial intelligence that’s trained and supervised by people.
M can actually complete tasks for users, from buying things, delivering gifts, to making reservations. As per Facebook, M’s secret weapon is what’s behind it. M isn’t just artificial intelligence, it has contracted humans helping it answer people’s requests while teaching it how to handle them automatically for future requests and responses.
Unlike other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf. It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more.
Once launched to the public, users will tap a small button at the bottom of the Messenger app to send a note to M, M’s will then decode, ask followup questions and complete the task.
M will rollout slowly over time to all users.
