Meet Facebook’s Digital Assistant: M

Apple and Microsoft will soon no longer be the only games in town when it comes to digital assistants. If you like Siri or Cortana, but don’t want to be tied to a particular OS, then M may be the solution and future of personal digital assistant apps. Facebook has decided to include the AI service as a part of the Facebook Messenger app. But don’t just expect another digital assistant who provides reminder notices and makes quips when you ask what is zero divided by zero. Facebook may not get there first, but they know how to improve on an existing product (just ask Myspace).

M will actually be able to accomplish more than other AI predecessors. For example, you will be able to ask M to make reservations at a restaurant, set up your travel arrangements, make appointments, and even purchase items. M isn’t just here to answer questions with a search query. This digital assistant is intended to take care of many of the things you would expect a human personal assistant to do for you.

When can you expect to start using M? Based on what we have seen so far, there could be a long wait ahead. David Marcus, the VP of messaging products at Facebook, says that they are still early in the project. It won’t be ready to release until all the bugs are worked out. Don’t forget that Facebook has over a billion users. That means that this project needs to be ready for release on an incredible scale before it can go live.

In the meantime, Facebook is bigger than ever. The CEO recently announced that a new milestone was reached for the company – one billion same-day users. That means that on Monday, August 24th, about one out of every seven people on the planet logged into their Facebook account at some point. That’s a true testament to how important staying connected is to the human race albeit one with the help of a personal digital assistant app.