Meet Facebook M, your new virtual assistant and Zuck’s answer to Siri and Cortana

Facebook has publicly started beta testing “M”, its new virtual personal assistant that will face-off with Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, and Google Now. The crucial difference between the three and Facebook’s new offering is that the latter is powered by actual people, not just artificial intelligence.

M is part of Facebook’s Messenger app now for a new select residents in the Bay area of San Francisco. Much like its competitor’s offerings, the assistant can help you make restaurant reservations, find a birthday gift for your significant other, and even suggest and book weekend getaways.

Leveraging Facebook’s enviable userbase, M relies on human customer service contractors, called M Trainers, to answer some questions and even complete tasks. M Trainers reportedly have customer service backgrounds and can make judgement calls, as humans are wont to. For example, M might book an Uber and a restaurant for that special date, but M could also surprise your spouse with flowers. Facebook didn’t mention the size of the M Trainer team, which consist mainly of contractors, not employees.

“Unlike other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf,” said David Marcus, the ex-PayPal CEO who’s now in charge of Facebook messaging apps, in a Facebook post. “It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more.” Such customer service tasks aren’t something Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon’s assistants offer. What also sets M apart from the likes of Siri and Cortana is that it doesn’t talk at all. As a result, M is gender-free.

To use M, users are provided with a small button at the bottom of the Messenger app that they can use to send M a note, something like sending your friends a message. Facebook’s software will then decode the language and ask follow-up questions. M will continue to send updates in the message thread until the task has been completed.

In his Facebook post, Marcus noted that M is in its infancy. The free service will be rolling out slowly to more users over the next few months, and Facebook intends to eventually make M available to all of Messenger’s 700 million users.