Facebook appears to be trying its hand at a lot of things. A couple of weeks back it was rumored that the company was developing a music streaming service of its own but it was quick to rubbish that rumor. Today there’s a new report out which claims that Facebook is building a virtual personal assistant for the Messenger app that’s internally referred to as Moneypenny.
Bond fans will instantly get the reference, Moneypenny is the name of the secretary from the popular James Bond franchise of books and movies.
The Information reports that Moneypenny is not a virtual assistant that’s similar to Cortana or Siri, instead it’s a service which will connect users with “real people,” who will aid with “researching and ordering products and services, among other tasks.”
It appears that Moneypenny is more of a conventional concierge system as opposed to a digital assistant, there are quite a few companies already that are doing this which put users in touch with real humans for a variety of tasks including but not limited to ordering food to booking flights.
According to the report Moneypenny is currently being used by Facebook employees internally and it can’t be said for sure at this point in time when this new service could be added to the Messenger application.
Facebook has not commented on the report.
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