Facebook testing personal digital assistant inside Messenger
Reuters
Published Aug 26, 2015 04:14PM ET
Updated Aug 26, 2015 04:27PM ET
Facebook testing personal digital assistant inside Messenger
By Yasmeen Abutaleb
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is testing a personal digital assistant called "M" within its Messenger service that can answer questions with live human help and perform tasks such as buying gifts online and booking restaurants.
M is "powered by artificial intelligence that's trained and supervised by people," David Marcus, vice president of Messaging products, wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday.
Rival services like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Inc's Siri, Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc's Google Now and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Corp's Cortana rely entirely on technology to answer questions.
M is a hybrid backed by a team of Facebook employees with customer service backgrounds, called M trainers, who can also make travel arrangements and appointments, Marcus wrote.
Facebook has introduced several functions inside Messenger, which boasts more than 700 million users, to transform it into a standalone platform. Earlier this year, it rolled out games exclusively on Messenger and launched products for businesses to directly connect with consumers.
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Written By: Reuters
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