Last week, Mark Zuckerberg previewed his new A.I. assistant, Jarvis, in a series of videos starring him, his wife Priscilla, baby daughter Max, and the voice of Morgan Freeman as the virtual assistant. The videos immediately became viral, and one of them caught the attention of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
On Tuesday, Dec. 20, the Facebook founder posted the first teaser video of Jarvis, and Zuckerberg told his followers that it was “a fun summary” of what the A.I. assistant can do and not a live demo. On Dec. 22, Gates took to the social media site and asked, “Hey Mark. Can Jarvis secretly order a hamburger and have it delivered to the back door? Asking for a friend…”
After an hour, Zuckerberg replied, “I think I can build that for you, Bill,” adding a smile emoji at the end of his message. Fans immediately went wild over the exchange, with one Facebook user noting, “Just a conversation between two people who own the virtual world.”
Though it is unknown if the two spend a lot of time together, it’s clear that Zuckerberg has a lot of respect and admiration for Gates as earlier this year, the 32-year-old wished him a happy birthday in a public Facebook post. Zuckerberg posted a photo of him and Gates talking to each other, and the shot was captioned, “Happy birthday, Bill! Thanks for your friendship and here’s to many more years of changing the world.”
Jarvis is the result of Zuckerberg’s yearlong effort, and the Facebook CEO himself coded the program for the personal smart home assistant. In a note posted on the social media site last week, his personal challenge for this year was to build a simple A.I. to run his home just “like Jarvis in ‘Iron Man.’”
As seen on the preview video, Jarvis is capable of voice and facial recognition, controlling lighting, appliances, and even playing music for Zuckerberg and his family. The father-of-one said that he will continue to improve the A.I. since he uses it every day and that he’s always finding new things he wants to add to the program. He also said that in time, it would be interesting for him to find ways to share Jarvis to the world.
Check out Jobs & Hire’s latest report for more news about Mark Zuckerberg and Jarvis.
