M launched with some fanfare as a limited trial, only open to a handful of people in San Francisco's Bay Area initially. The idea was that the system would learn to respond to various queries and requests for assistance through messenger. And, over time, it would become sophisticated enough to become a more sophisticated assistant in the vein of Siri, Alexa or Assistant. Unfortunately, the concierge service that powered it was little more than a way of getting other people to make calls for you, and its utility was perpetually limited.

The fact that Facebook couldn't, or wouldn't, find reasons for folks to use its platform seemed likely to kill it stone dead. In addition, there are plenty of other human-run concierge services that charge a pretty penny to to a similar job. Running the service at, what we assume was a steep loss, was probably only worthwhile as a way of testing the waters and hoping that the AI would eventually take over. But since folks seemingly never embraced it, it had to die, so those beta testers in San Francisco have a few days left to get their fill.

A Facebook spokesperson sent us the following comment: