Facebook AI Assistant Will Begin Inserting Itself Into Your Private Conversations

AIFacebook announced this week that its Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant program, M, will now be able to make suggestions to users within private messages.

The social media giant first introduced the concept of M more than a year and a half ago, promising a do-it-all virtual assistant.

“Unlike other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf,” Facebook VP of messaging products wrote at the time. “It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more.”

M isn’t capable of all that yet, but starting this month for iOS and Android users, it will be able to analyze your conversations in Facebook Messenger. Based upon the subject of your conversation, it will make recommendations to you such as sharing your location, calling an Uber or a Lyft, making a payment, or sending stickers.

Facebook was quick to point out that M will not barge into conversations invasively — according to Stan Chudnovsky, Facebook head of product for Messenger, it will only appear “if the chances are really, really high that you’d pick [the suggestion] up.”

But while this feature could prove helpful to users, it’s also undeniably creepy that Facebook’s AI is capable of reading our private messages this closely.