The virtual assistant Facebook introduced within Messenger was called M.
Facebook announced M in August 2015 as an artificial-intelligence assistant designed to complete practical tasks inside Messenger. It was intended to help with jobs such as buying items, arranging gift deliveries, reserving restaurant tables and organizing travel. The project was led by Alex Lebrun, whose chatbot company Wit.ai Facebook had acquired.
M used a combination of software and human operators. When its automated system struggled with a request, human “trainers” could take over the conversation, which helped the service handle complex tasks but made it difficult to scale economically. By April 2017, Facebook had tested M with roughly 10,000 users and also introduced “M Suggestions” for U.S. users, offering automated recommendations based on chat context.
Facebook announced in January 2018 that it would discontinue M and apply lessons from the project to other artificial-intelligence work. M is therefore not the same product as Siri, Cortana or Alexa, although those assistants were among its intended competitors.