(2018-01-14) Facebook Is Shutting Down M, its Personal Assistant Service That Combined Humans And AI

Facebook is shutting down M, its personal assistant service that combined humans and AI. (Intelligent Software Assistant)

I got access to M in October 2015, and used the service only about three dozen times over its lifespan. It felt like an amazing resource to have at my disposal, and yet in practice I almost never knew what to do with it. In most cases, I used M only when I knew that doing so would save me from making a phone call — because M would be making it for me.

That could speak to why Facebook had trouble making M more widely available. Fin, a new virtual assistant startup founded by a former Facebook executive that closely mirrors the M service, charges $1 per minute, with a minimum monthly expenditure of $120