Facebook tests robot contact centre

The contact centre industry could soon become the latest victim of the rise of the machines after Facebook revealed it is trialling a new artificial intelligence-driven customer service scheme.
While digital assistants are nothing new – Apple has Siri, Microsoft offers Cortana and Google has Now – the new Facebook program, dubbed M, can actually complete tasks on customer’s behalf.
It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more, according to the social media firm.
“M is a personal digital assistant inside of Messenger that completes tasks and finds information on your behalf,” David Marcus, head of Messenger at Facebook explained.
He added: “We start capturing all of your intent for the things you want to do. Intent often leads to buying something, or to a transaction, and that’s an opportunity for us to [make money] over time.”
While it will be powered by AI, M will initially be supervised by people, although a Facebook spoksman claimed that “more and more of M’s work will become automated over time as the system learns. This will help us expand the service, make it faster and scale to more people.”