According to a report by CNBC, Facebook is allegedly working behind the scenes on a voice assistant. The social network giant hasn't shied away from trying new things, no matter how divergent from its core business, but this latest dabble seems even more interesting, considering people's growing wariness of the company's practices.
Read MoreFacebook kills its "M" virtual assistant
Facebook first announced its virtual assistant, simply named 'M,' back in 2015. It ran inside Facebook Messenger, and was apparently trained and supervised by real people. It started off as a limited test to residents of San Francisco, then Facebook rolled it out more widely last year.
Read MoreOver a year later, Facebook's M assistant finally makes its way into Messenger
Earlier today Facebook launched their new M assistant service in Messenger on iOS and Android for the US (with other countries to come). Much like Google Assistant in Allo it's meant to drop in at convenient points in a conversation to give you shortcuts and tools to simplify things.
Facebook announced M well over a year ago, jumping a bit late on the bandwagon of personal assistants, but allegedly theirs is at least partially driven or overseen by real living human beings, which sets it apart from the others in no small way. If they manage to leverage enough other modern tech buzzwords like AI, machine learning, and perhaps some synergy for flavor, it may even be of some use.
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