(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