Facebook Has Made Their Own Ridiculously Helpful Version Of Siri

Facebook Has Made Their Own Ridiculously Helpful Version Of Siri

Facebook Has Made Their Own Ridiculously Helpful Version Of Siri

There's a new personal assistant on the scene. One that knows all your friends, what you 'Like' and who's profile you were stalking at 3 am.

Facebook has launched 'M', an all-knowing tool that will help you with searches, purchases and everything in between.

At present, it lives in the Facebook Messenger of a few hundred people in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it's set to be rolled out across the globe after testing is complete.

"M is a personal digital assistant inside of Messenger that completes tasks and finds information on your behalf," David Marcus, head of Messenger at Facebook, said in a Facebook post

"It's powered by artificial intelligence that's trained and supervised by people." So less Skynet, more 'virtual concierge'. 

"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."

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To get M talking, users will open a conversation with the assistant in Facebook Messenger in the same manner they would if they were talking to real person. By typing a question in a conversational tone - "Where can I get a burger today?" - M will respond in kind - "There's the Mr Hyde National Burger day".

Will you consider using M when it launches? Will you stick to one of the existing 'personal assistants'? Or do prefer calling a real-life human, like your mate Tim, and asking him?

Marc Chacksfield
Content Director

As Content Director of Shortlist, Marc likes nothing more than to compile endless lists of an evening by candlelight. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.