All messaging apps are no more the sam. A few years ago, there was few differences between SMS and a slew of chat apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, Kik, Line, KakaoTalk and Facebook Messenger. But each have slowly defined themselves differently, whether through simplicity, connections to businesses, media, stickers, games, location, and other features.
But today, Facebook escalated the battle for chat with the official announcement of M, its new personal assistant built into Messenger. It can actually complete tasks for you, such as buy things, deliver gifts, make reservations, arrange travel, or just about anything else you ask of it.
What’s truly unique, though, is what’s behind M. Specifically, a lot of live bodies. M isn’t just artificial intelligence. Facebook has contracted real people to help M answer people’s requests while teaching the technology how to handle them automatically in the future.
M is still in early beta testing, so it’s hard to assess just how well it accomplishes this grand ambition. But if it works, Facebook may have developed a product so useful yet so complex and resource-intensive that it could differentiate Facebook Messenger in a way its competitors can’t or won’t follow.
- There are digital assistants like Google Now and Siri. But those are so mechanized that they can only provide rote answers and reminders.
- There are personal assistants like Magic and Operator that use humans to answer complex requests, but they’re independent apps without massive scale.
- And there are messaging apps fighting to grow their already-huge audiences, but that still look similar despite their attempts to differentiate.
M combines the power of a world-leading artificial intelligence lab with the dexterity of humans Facebook can afford to hire and the scale of its 700 million user Messenger app.
As I noted earlier, while Google and Apple were dicking around with the pure science of artificial intelligence, Facebook used human helpers to brute force a full-featured assistant. The closest thing to M might be the third-party app WeSecretary built atop WeChat.
Making M work for all of Messenger’s users might be slow or expensive, but it’ll probably be both.
Eventually, M would ideally work with minimal human assistance. To get there, Facebook needs time for its M contractors to teach it the best way to solve problems. With a small workforce and small beta, that could take a while. Growing M’s test base and the legions of helpers behind it will cost a ton.
But that’s why Facebook is so distinctly well-equipped. It has money. Not quite Google or Apple money, but with $4 billion in revenue and around$700 million in profit last quarter, Facebook has resources to throw at M.
What do you think about this?. Is it cool enough? Would it be accepted worldwide?
