Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, has just purchased Servicefriend, an artificial intelligence startup that creates messaging app bots. These are those applications you can text for certain things like money management or mental health. Only, instead of another person on the line, you have artificial intelligence on the other side who’s always available to answer.
A better Libra experience
The reasoning for this is thanks to the platform’s upcoming cryptocurrency stablecoin, Libra. While Libra won’t be a traditional asset created for cryptocurrency trading purposes, it will exist for faster and cheaper cross-regional trading. While we don’t know for sure what the company is doing with Servicefriend, one can imagine it will incorporate into the Libra experience somehow.
Speaking to TechCrunch on the matter, Facebook had said the following:
“We acquire smaller tech companies from time to time. We don’t always discuss our plans. Facebook’s plan is to build a range of financial services for people to use Calibra to pay out and receive Libra as for example, to send money to contacts, pay bills, top up their phones, buy things and more.”
Considering Libra will most likely plug into Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other platforms that Facebook owns, it would only make sense that they have an automated bot that helps their billions of users manage the experience somehow.
