Google and Facebook enter the war of personal messaging assistants
The facts
Instant messaging services are in the process of transforming into veritable communication hubs and offer the same retail-related services like online order tracking for Facebook Messenger.
The test launch of the M assistant endowed with artificial intelligence on Facebook Messenger last August, or more recently the rumours of a personal assistant from Google for Hangouts, is raising the strategic stakes emerging around messaging.
These assistants set out to “perform tasks in place of users”. This is the type of intelligence mentioned by David Marcus, Manager of Facebook Messenger and former CEO of Paypal. With its artificial intelligence, M can book a taxi or a table in your favourite restaurant while telling you to leave sooner for lunch because there are tailbacks on the roads and you need to fill up because your car will soon be low on petrol.
Currently Facebook’s artificial intelligence works on algorithms but also human input to control the content pushed by M.
Interpretation
With artificial intelligence in its messaging system Facebook is attacking Google’s search engine head-on. No longer any need to leave the messaging service to find information. With the integration of artificial intelligence in Hangouts, no wonder that Google has reacted to keep control over its search activity.
Its assistant aims to become everyone’s life assistant.
This artificial intelligence indeed fully meets consumers’ facilitation expectations for a simple, swift, effective and timely customer experience. With its messaging service, Facebook is trying to become a genuine service-centric hub!
That could also be the case for Amazon, already in the personal assistant market with its Amazon Echo. The artificial intelligence of Amazon Echo could well be transposed to a mobile instant messaging app “made in Amazon”
And what if tomorrow’s service platform for consumers, which only two years ago was supposed to be embodied by the digital wallet on mobiles, were to be transposed into messaging applications, the cornerstone of communication for the coveted millenials?
