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Facebook Messenger will translate Spanish messages for you
Facebook Messenger can now translate messages from Spanish to English (and vice versa) for you, whatever it is you and your friend are talking about. The feature, called M's translation suggestions, debuted at F8 in May as one of Facebook's new tools for businesses and used to only work for chats between buyers and sellers in Marketplace. Starting today, though, you'll see a "Translate to English/Spanish" module pop up when someone messages you in either language, so long as you're in the US or Mexico.
Facebook kills its ‘M’ AI assistant on January 19th
Facebook M is, or was, an artificially-intelligent AI that used human operatives to ensure that its recommendations were on point. "Was," at least, because the social network has revealed that its shutting down the platform on January 19th after two-and-a-half-years of operation. The news was confirmed to the Verge today, with Facebook saying that the project was an experiment that it learned a lot from. These insights will be used on other internal AI projects, while the human operatives will be found jobs elsewhere in the company. For everyone else, though, the technology powering M has been used in Facebook Messenger's M suggestions, and those will continue going forward.
Facebook Messenger's AI 'M' can now assist you in Spanish
It sounds like Facebook "M," the AI-powered virtual assistant for Messenger, has learned a new language. According to the social network, it can now dole out suggestions in Spanish if that's your default language in the US or if you're in Mexico. The company rolled out M to all users in the US in April, giving it the power to pop up in the middle of conversations. If you ask a friend to pay you $10 for pizza, it automatically shows all possible in-app payment options. Tell an officemate "let's meet tomorrow," and it provides a link to create an appointment and will even hail you an Uber or a Lyft. That's the kind of assistant M is, and it now works the same way in Spanish.
The people who made Siri are readying another big leap in AI
It's been a couple of years since we heard from Viv Labs, but a report from the Washington Post says it will debut the next generation of AI assistance on Monday. One reason we won't dismiss that possibility is because of the last project developed by company co-founders Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham -- a little feature called Siri. According to the Post, as much of a third of the team behind Siri is now at Viv, ready to fulfill a bigger dream of what the personal assistant can do than what we've seen so far in its Apple iteration.
Microsoft hopes Cortana will lead an army of chatbots to victory
If Bloomberg Businessweek's latest cover story didn't make obvious enough, the hour or so Microsoft dedicated to it on stage at its Build developer conference should have cleared up any doubts: Cortana as a big part of the company's future. Microsoft wants the AI assistant to do everything, but knows it can't make that dream a reality by itself. The new framework allows developers to build an independent chatbot that plays nice with users and Cortana. Microsoft isn't the only one pursuing the goal of the perfect assistant, though, and there's no telling if its efforts to inspire an army of chatbots will be successful. Although chatbots have been around for half a century, they didn't have a practical use until the internet took hold. SmarterChild, which was popular on AOL AIM and Microsoft Messenger, worked like an advanced directory inquiries, giving out business information, weather and even movie times. Google searches quickly took over this functionality for most users, though, and more modern interpretations have largely taken the form of a personal assistant. Apple's Siri, released in 2011 with the iPhone 4S, blended conversational interactions with basic functionality like opening apps, playing music, and managing calendar appointments. In 2012, Google Now took a more automated approach, surfacing information based on your search results, calendar, and email. Cortana, which debuted in 2013, built on this with greater integrations, deep links into apps and a secure, personalizable "Notebook" that stores user information. In the meantime, developers in China were doing something completely different.
