Facebook said it will shut down M, an automated personal assistant once thought to be the social network’s text-based response to services like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. M’s last day will be January 19th.
According to a statement from Facebook: “We launched this project to learn what people needed and expected of an assistant, and we learned a lot. We’re taking these useful insights to power other AI projects at Facebook.”
Facebook first launched M in 2015 as part of its Messenger app. The service, as originally conceived, differentiated itself from the crowded field virtual assistants by fulfilling more advanced tasks like booking appointments, ordering flowers and dealing with customer service.
To accomplish that, Facebook M initially relied on a mix of artificial intelligence technology and real humans. However, this ambitious version of M was only available to a small pool of test users.
However, since not many people have not embraced M, Facebook had no choice than to shut it down. Perhaps, another Artificial Intelligence Personal Assistant is on its way that will practically and pragmatically rival or compete Siri and Alexa.
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