Since Apple introduced Siri on its iPhone 4S smartphone in October 2011, the "personal assistant" in popular consumer tech has gone from what was once a creation of science fiction to ubiquitous to mobile users.

Google followed suit with Google Now for Android phones the next year, and Microsoft released Cortana in April 2014. Since their debuts, each has moved on from being used solely on smartphones to various other devices and programs, including Cortana being prominently featured in the newly-released Windows 10 desktop operating system.

However, the common thread with all three of those brands' assistants is they're entirely reliant on automation and artificial intelligence — leading to the inevitable mix-up, misunderstood query or just plain clueless response.

Facebook, with its new personal assistant, "M," aims to prevent this by incorporating a human element into the personal assistant.

No, all you James Bond lovers, "M" does not mean that Judi Dench will be telling you where the best Neapolitan-style pizzeria is in your city. The namesake letter for the service comes from the Messenger app, where M will reside. That app has caused some consternation in the past, when Facebook pushed its chat and messages for mobile users off its main app and onto the Messenger app.

It's unlikely you can access M quite yet, as the feature is limited to a few hundred Messenger users in the Bay Area and some Facebook employees for now. However, those users are finding out M can be a personal assistant in the truest sense of the word.

"Unlike other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf," Facebook Vice President of Messaging David Marcus said in a post announcing M on Aug. 26. "It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more."

As for privacy concerns, at least for now, M will not utilize a user's data, likes and preferences on the Facebook app and integrate it with the personal assistant. This is a departure from Google Now, which suggests various items and info cards based on search, browsing and email data. It will, however, parse details from various conversations with M.

It also appears that M will not solely depend on humans — called "M trainers" — to answer questions, meaning that you could still ask it who won the World Series in 1993 and not have to wait on a human to answer something that could be easily searched for in seconds.

However, the service represents a significant risk for Facebook, because it will have to operate at a cost much higher than its competitors due to the people it employs to answer users. There's also the huge issue that while Siri, Cortana and Google Now are prominent parts of their respective mobile or desktop OS, M will have to be activated by a user choosing to use a specific app.

"Facebook's M doesn't have a physical home and, unless Facebook's planning on dropping a social OS anytime soon, it's not going to," Lucas Matney writes in TechCrunch. "Digital assistants desperately need deep hardware integration in order to be useful because it takes too many steps to reach the functionality otherwise, and digital assistants are tools that need to be accessible at a moment's notice."

Right now, Facebook is being pretty coy about how soon it plans to roll out M — for free — to all users of Facebook and Messenger. However, the announcement indicates the Menlo Park, California, company wants it to be the dominant name in the personal assistant market.

M has significant potential, but it will have to overcome hurdles its biggest-name competitors will never have to worry about.