Facebook is working on a Siri rival with a difference

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You know you're my favorite, Miss Moneypenny.
Photo: Eon Productions

Apple has Siri, Google has Google Now, Microsoft has Cortana, and soon Facebook may have the James Bond-inspired Moneypenny.

According to a new report, Facebook will introduce the assistant as part of its Facebook Messenger app, letting Facebook users set appointments, check the weather, or purchase products.

While that sounds relatively similar to the likes of Google Now and Siri, where Moneypenny will apparently differ is in the fact that it will connect users with real people to help with certain aspects of the research process.

There aren’t too many more details than that, but the idea of combining a human curation element with algorithms is something we haven’t seen from any of the virtual assistants offered by big companies.

It does strike a bit of a chord with the human-machine ethos behind Apple Music, though. Maybe the tech world is realizing that algorithms can’t do everything…

Source: The Information (paywall)

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