Meet Facebook’s ‘M’ Virtual Assistant Inside Messenger

Facebook has unveiled a new virtual assistant called ‘M’ that lives inside the Messenger app. The feature is rolling out in San Francisco Bay Area initially.

Facebook’s M artificial intelligence is trained and supervised by people, and has the ability to do things on your behalf.

“M is a personal digital assistant inside of Messenger that completes tasks and finds information on your behalf,” wrote David Marcus, VP of Messaging Products at Facebook.

“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.”

At the moment, there’s no word from Facebook on the availability of M outside of the US. But it’s likely to take some time for the virtual assistant to reach all 700 million Facebook Messenger users.

/ David Marcus