Facebook Begins To Roll Out Its Own Virtual Assistant, M

Are you impressed or underwhelmed by the digital assistant capabilities of Siri? Unfortunately, she often doesn’t understand what the user is saying, and when she does, it’s pretty likely she’ll respond simply by displaying a page of links.

Truly, Siri is a disappointment to many users. Why isn’t Apple’s talking digital assistant changing the way people use their smartphones in a more dramatic way? Part of the problem is Siri is built on old technology. However, even if the company upgrades Siri to the latest in artificial intelligence (AI), she won’t come close to providing the type of assistance that a human can offer. Even though great advancements have been made in AI over the past few years, it’s unfortunately still a long way from human intelligence.

With M, Facebook’s new virtual assistant, the company doesn’t shy away from admitting the current limitations of AI. M is built atop Facebook Messenger and it made its debut this week, arriving on the phones of a few hundred unsuspecting users in the San Francisco area. Clearly, M is Facebook’s answer to Siri and similar services such as Microsoft Cortana and Google Now.

Like its rivals, M can tell you what the weather will be like today, what last night’s football score was, and how wide the Grand Canyon is. Facebook’s virtual assistant can also be used to schedule appointments and send reminders, just like its competitors.

However, M, named for “Messenger,” does differ from the others in a few ways.

“Unlike other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf,” explained David Marcus, the ex-PayPal CEO who is now in charge of Facebook messaging apps. “It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more.” These types of customer service tasks cannot be accomplished with the virtual assistants that are available from Apple, Google, Microsoft or Amazon.

The reason that M can do this is because it does not rely solely on artificial intelligence to answer questions. Instead, when M doesn’t know the answer, it turns to real-life customer service representatives, called M trainers, to provide information. Facebook didn’t reveal the size of the M Trainer team, but the company did indicate that it consists primarily of contractors as opposed to employees.

Facebook’s virtual assistant isn’t built into an OS, like Siri and iOS, Google Now and Android, or Cortana and Windows 10. Instead, it resides in Facebook’s messaging app. Another detail that makes M stand apart from the others is the fact that the user doesn’t talk to the virtual assistant, but instead sends text questions and commands to it, or sends a recorded audio clip. Additionally, M always responds via text as opposed to by voice.

In his Facebook post, Marcus noted M is still in its infancy. It will be rolling out slowly to more users over the next few months, and Facebook intends to eventually make its virtual assistant available to all of Messenger’s 700 million users.