Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg revealed he is dedicating his year to making a home AI butler.
Now, he has revealed the project is already coming to fruition - and promised to reveal it next month.
While at a Facebook 'town hall' event in Rome, he told an audience 'I'm making progress - I hope to have a demo next month.'
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'I've got to the point where I can control lights, gates, and temperature, much to the chagrin of my wife who cannot now control the temperature, as is it's programmed to only respond to my voice.'
He said this was 'One of the perks of being an engineer,' before adding 'I'll give her access once I'm done.'
Zuckerberg said the system can now recognise him when he goes home.
'I programmed it so when I walk up to my gate, it sees my face and lets me in
'It's been a really cool experience, and I'm looking forward to showing it off next month'
He recently told The Verge it can already control his home, and even makes his breakfast.
'I have it to the point where I can control everything in the house,' he said.
'It can control the lights, the temperature, the doors. It can make me toast.'
Zuckerberg, who commits to a new personal challenge everyyear, revealed his plan in a Facebook post in January.
'You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man,'Zuckerberg wrote, referring to an artificially intelligentbutler who appears in the Marvel comic books and movies.
He said the system is now hooked up to his toaster.
'The real question is not how it makes me toast, that's actually easy — you hook up an internet-powered [device] to the power and you trigger it.
'The real question, which is actually the more challenging AI problem, is when to make me toast.
'In the morning I'm writing all these emails, and I go for a run, and my meetings start at different times, and so I've built this whole thing which figures out from where I am — Am I out? Am I on a run? — when's the right time to [make me
Zuckerberg said he is using many of the AI tools being developed at Facebook for the project.
He revealed it will include facial recognition and even chatbot capabilities.
His plans also include teaching the assistant to let friends into his home by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell
'One of the things that's been pretty fun is using all the AI tools that we've developed at Facebook so far, just seeing how much progress we've made on image recognition and face recognition and object recognition and voice recognition and language understanding.
'At home, I think the biggest impact has been that I've wrested control of the thermostat from Priscilla.'
The assistant will visualise data tosupport Zuckerberg at work, he continued.
'This should be a fun intellectual challenge to code thisfor myself,' Zuckerberg wrote. 'I'm looking forward to sharingwhat I learn over the course of the year.'
Zuckerberg will start the project by exploring existingtechnology, he wrote.
He will then begin teaching the technologyto understand his voice so that it will learn to controleverything in his home, such as music, lights and temperature.
HOW FACEBOOK'S CHATBOTS WILL WORK
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Bot-building capabilities will be in a test mode with Facebook approving creations before they are released, according to vice president of messaging products David Marcus.
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Tools made available on Tuesday included one for the creation of 'high-end, self-learning bots' along with ways for them to be brought to people's attention at Messenger, Marcus said.
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'If you want to build more complex bots, you can now use our bot engine,' Marcus told a packed audience of developers.
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'You feed it samples of conversation, and it's better over time. You can build your bot today.'
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The list of partners launching Messenger bots included Business Insider, which said it will use the technology to deliver news stories to people in real-time.
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'We are excited about this new offering because we know that messaging apps are exploding in popularity,' Business Insider said in a story at its website announcing the move.
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Cloud computing star Salesforce planned to use the platform to help businesses have 'deeper, more personalized and one-to-one customer journeys within the chat experience,' said Salesforce president and chief product officer Alex Dayon.
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