Facebook improves its AI Messenger assistant ‘M’ with new wits

Facebook M, the company’s AI-powered assistant that lives inside Messenger, was launched widely back in April, giving suggestions to users based on the context of their conversations. Today, M is getting a bit smarter and more socially capable.

Perhaps most notable is that the AI assistant will now proactively remind users to save pieces of content like articles, videos or FB posts to check out later or share in message threads using the “Saved” extension. If you’re someone who gets sent a lot of things to read from your friends, this should help you stay on top of it all so you don’t have to lie when they ask you what you thought of something they sent you in Messenger.

It’s interesting that Messenger’s M is really being taught to help you avoid social faux pas, as well, things that really may save you in some situations. One incoming set of suggestions is related to birthdays, ensuring that if you’ve been chatting with someone, you’re reminded to wish them a happy birthday.

Lastly, M will be adding suggestions for voice or video calls, so if you’re in a one-on-one or group conversation and someone says, “Can you call me?” M may pop up offering a quick tap to make the call inside Messenger. It will be interesting to see what summons this and whether Messenger can piggyback on the brand success of others so that when you ask a friend to FaceTime or Skype you, M suggests you use a Messenger video call.

It’s still early days for M; Facebook has been driving pretty small features that offer minute improvements to conversations without overwhelming users or being overly obtrusive. As the features subtly build, M’s guidance may become more indispensable, or it may just become another new Messenger feature you turn off in the settings.