Facebook M
2015 - 2018, 2 years old
Facebook's Messenger concierge, a personal assistant that mixed AI with human contractors to book tables, order gifts, and plan trips.
Facebook introduced M in August 2015 as a Messenger-based assistant meant to out-do Siri and Alexa by handling the hard things: booking restaurants, ordering flowers, planning trips. The trick was that humans did the hard things. Behind the chat window sat contractors fielding the requests the AI could not, on the theory that the model would watch and gradually take over. It never did, a human in every loop did not scale, and M stayed stuck in a small private beta most Facebook users never saw. Facebook announced the shutdown on January 8, 2018 and closed the service on January 19, keeping the M name only for a handful of canned Messenger suggestions.
- Founded
- 2015-08
- Shut down
- 2018-01-19
- Funding raised
- Undisclosed
- Years alive
- 2
- Founders
Sources
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