Facebook F8: Messenger to get new robot powers and virtual reality to roll out at company’s developer conference

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The new bots will sit within the Messenger app, which users traditionally use to chat to friends — and, as of last year, human representatives for businesses. By being built to recognise specific phrases, they’ll be able to carry out the same work as a customer service assistant: if a user tells the bot to pay their friend £30, for instance, then the robot will be able to recognise the different parts of that sentence and send the money through their bank, no humans needed. Facebook has already shown the power of some of those with its virtual assistant, known as M. That tool is built into messenger and will respond to people’s requests using a combination of artificial intelligence and humans. Facebook’s bots aren’t expected to be as public — built into the private Messenger feed rather than the public discussion board of Twitter.