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Tag: personal assistant

  • ‘M’ Is Facebook’s Personal Assistant Inside Messenger

    ‘M’ Is Facebook’s Personal Assistant Inside Messenger

    Ever since Facebook split Messenger from its flagship app (a move that wasn’t everyone’s favorite), the company has been making addition after addition to its core functionality. It’s pretty clear that Facebook wants Messenger to wear many hats.

    Today, the company has unveiled the robot hat.

    Facebook Messaging head David Marcus has pulled the cover off M, Facebook’s ambitious new addition to Messenger that serves as “a personal digital assistant inside of Messenger that completes tasks and finds information on your behalf.” We heard reports of this last month (when it was codenamed “Moneypenny”).

    According to Marcus, M is powered by AI but “supervised by people.”

    “Unlike other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf. It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more,” he says.

    M is clearly Facebook’s answer to Siri and Cortana, Apple and Microsoft’s respective personal assistants. But Facebook’s M has the benefit of cross-platform reach, especially considering Facebook Messenger is now globally available to anyone with a phone number.

    Screen Shot 2015-08-26 at 2.02.34 PM

    Facebook has been hard at work turning Messenger into something way more than a texting app.

    The company turned it into a developer platform, allowing appmakers to build directly for the platform. More germane to the news of M, Facebook is trying to turn Messenger into a platform to connect businesses with their customers – for the purposes of customer service, order tracking, and more.

    A few months ago, Facebook gave Messenger its own web version. Then, Facebook allowed games to be played inside the platform. Messenger also got P2P payments last month.

    Marcus says Facebook is “beginning to test” M. Considering what it is – a massive AI project that’s at least for now dependent upon human oversight – and also considering how unbelievably slow Facebook is when it comes to some product rollouts, I wouldn’t expect to see M pop up in your Messenger contacts that soon.

  • Lindsay Lohan In Another Court Battle In London

    Lindsay Lohan thought she had put all her worries behind her. After an 11th-hour dash that finally fulfilled her public service probation requirements in the United States, Lindsay Lohan seemed set. She was no longer on probation, no longer wanted or defending herself on any charges.

    Now the Daily Mail reports that Lindsay Lohan is named in a lawsuit of alleged unpaid wages due to a personal assistant hired for her through a placement agency.

    Reports say that one Jesse Peckham was hired to serve as a personal assistant to Lohan for a three-month period while she worled on Speed-the-Plow in London’s famed West End.

    Peckham was hired by a recruitment firm called Sorted Personal Management. That company is now accusing Lohan’s British publicist Beth Morris of failing to pay the £3,300 bill for Peckham’s services. There is some talk that Peckham walked out on his job with Lindsay Lohan because he felt her demands of him were ridiculous and insulting.

    Other than this bit of inconvenience, Lindsay Lohan has said that she so loves her life in London that she wants to stay there permanently.

    “I can definitely see myself settling in London permanently,” Lohan told the Daily Mail.

    “For me, I feel more comfortable working from London. And it is beautiful. The architecture is incredible and the parks are so nice. I also love exploring different cities and using London as a base means I can go to more places. That’s really important to me.”

    Bring it 😎 give light don't take it 👍🏻 #shinebrightlikeadiamond www.liketk.it/1DhYD

    A photo posted by Lindsay Lohan (@lindsaylohan) on

    “I can go for a run here on my own,” Lohan said of living in London. “I do every morning, early. I needed to grow up and London is a better place for me to do that than anywhere else. In LA I didn’t know what to do, apart from go out every night.”

    But one of the best things about living in London is that Lohan’s own personal woes are not seen as fodder for public consumption.

    “You turn on the news in LA and it is all gossip about people. All the stuff that is going on in the world right now and this gossip is the news?” she said. “I love the BBC. I haven’t heard myself mentioned on TV since I have been here. That has been really weird for me, and great.”

    Not only does she not see her own name dragged through the headlines in London, she does not have to be subjugated to lurid news of others’ lives as much.

    “I don’t even know who got married and who got pregnant,” she says.

    Lindsay Lohan credits her life in London with helping her drop her old habits and grow up.

    “I’m in a really good place. I’m blessed to have been able to do a play in London and start a different way of life,” she says.

    “New York is very fast paced and it’s not like that over here for me. You grow up and change, and I’m really happy about that, as overall I feel a lot better. Moving here was a new start for me and my outlook on life is different now. Clean slate. Fresh start. Hard work pays off.”

  • Facebook Wants Real People to Help You Order Stuff Inside Messenger

    Facebook, currently on a mission to beef up its Messenger platform in a multitude of ways, may just give everyone a personal shopping assistant inside the app.

    The Information reports that sources familiar with the plans are talking about Facebook’s newest addition to the Messenger lineup – a personal assistant codenamed “Moneypenny” (a obvious nod to the James Bond character).

    I doesn’t appear that Facebook is building its own Siri or Cortana, but instead building the framework for a service to rival startups like Magic or Operator. The Information says “Moneypenny” will “allow users to ask real people for help researching and ordering products and services, among other tasks.”

    So, Facebook might want to let users message real people, who can provide help in shopping or purchasing other services.

    Since unbundling Messenger from the main Facebook app last April, Facebook has been hard at work turning Messenger into something way more than a texting app.

    The company turned it into a developer platform, allowing appmakers to build directly for the platform. More germane to the news of “Monneypenny”, Facebook is trying to turn Messenger into a platform to connect businesses with their customers – for the purposes of customer service, order tracking, and more.

    A few months ago, Facebook gave Messenger its own web version. More recently, Facebook has allowed games to be played inside the platform. P2P payments just went live for all users in the US.

    And now, you don’t even have to have a Facebook account to use Messenger.

    Not much else is known about a timeline for “Moneypenny”‘s launch. It’s currently going through internal testing, according to the report.