New Media M.A. Research Blog | Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

“Hey, Siri…” “I am listening…”: Apple, Privacy & Siri

Summer 2019 was quite eventful for virtual assistants across platforms. The big five all got exposed for recording their virtual assistant users’ audio, Apple among them. Such revelations prompt the prior mentioned company to at first temporarily suspend the...

By Anna Strelkova on 09/22/19 Comments Off

Facebook “M assistant”: a power of suggestion

It was never a secret that Facebook for a long time was trying to engage AI technology to expand the activity on their social media services. From their introduction of functions to identify people who are depressed and who...

By Katarzyna Wiercioch on 09/23/18 Comments Off

‘M’ Assistant – a New Territory For Advertising

‘M’ is an Artificial Intelligent virtual assistant inside Messenger which aims to be helpful to its users when appropriate. M Assistant analyzes their normal conversation on Messenger and pops up to suggest one of the features within the app...

By Gergana Ivanova on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Facebook’s new virtual assistant ‘M’: mastermind or menace?

Facebook recently introduced the world to ‘M’, its brand new virtual assistant that will reside in Facebook’s messaging app. Will, because for now, the new application is still in its test phase. Nonetheless, this rather unexpected move of Facebook...

By Lianne Kersten on 09/15/15 Comments Off

Semantic Search Servants: Facebook’s M and the new way of searching the web

“You think I’m weird?” “Kind of.” “Why?” “Well, you seem like a person but you’re just a voice in a computer.” – Theodore meets his new virtual assistant, whom he later falls in love with (Jonze, Her). Facebook M...

By Elias Gorter on 09/15/15 Comments Off