Facebook Unveils ‘M’ Assistant In Messenger To Compete With Apple’s Siri

Facebook has launched its own personal assistant called ‘M’ and it lives inside Messenger.

According to the social network, M takes things a step further than rival virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Now, because it uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) that’s trained by and works alongside actual people.

The text-based service responds to questions typed into the Messenger app.

According to Facebook, it won’t use any of the social data from users’ profiles to answer the questions.

M will be able to complete tasks on the user’s behalf, such as booking a restaurant, making travel arrangements or buying a gift.

Facebook’s VP of messaging products, David Marcus posted a statement on the new feature, saying: “Today we’re beginning to test a new service called M. M is a personal digital assistant inside of Messenger that completes tasks and finds information on your behalf.

“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”.

The service is currently only available for users in the San Francisco bay area but is set to roll out to all of Facebook’s global users if the trial is successful.

Marcus commented: “This is early in the journey to build M into an at-scale service. But it’s an exciting step towards enabling people on Messenger to get things done across a variety of things, so they can get more time to focus on what’s important in their lives”.

(Image credit: Facebook)