Facebook is still 'a long way' from broadly releasing 'M,' its own super-smart chat bot

Facebook just released new tools that will let any business build "smart" chatbots that users can interact with and even purchase things from while using the Messenger app. But what about Facebook's own super-smart virtual assistant, M? The bot, which Facebook first introduced to the world in the Fall, got few on-stage mentions during the company's F8 developer conference on Tuesday. And the third-party chatbots that Facebook now wants outside businesses to create might seem to obviate the need for Facebook to maintain its own bot. But Facebook told Business Insider that the company has not given up on M, even if the bot is still "a long way" from being broadly released. Stan Chudnovsky, head of product for messaging at Facebook, assures Business Insider that the company does still foresee M as being its own product.