Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg may debut AI assistant this month

This month, Mark Zuckerberg hopes to offer the world a glimpse at his pet project, a face- and voice-recognition system that allows the Facebook chief executive to command his home environment much like the fictional Tony Stark orders around Jarvis in Iron Man.

And his wife, Priscilla Chan, might not be thrilled.

“I got it to this point where now I can control the lights, I can control the gates, I can control the temperature – much to the chagrin of my wife, who now cannot control the temperature because it is programmed to only listen to my voice,” Zuckerberg told a packed audience in Rome, his latest town hall session.

“I’ll give her access once I’m done,” he joked.

The artificial intelligence software powering the system – part of a personal challenge Zuckerberg set for himself earlier in the year – is a by-product of Facebook’s strategic mission to improve the social network’s ability to better identify faces in photos and videos that are relevant to users.

AI is part of the company’s three-pillar vision, which includes developing augmented- and virtual- reality devices (Facebook owns Oculus Rift) and extending access to the internet far and wide (the company’s Internet.org project aims to use lasers and drones to extend connectivity to remote areas).