Zuckerberg may debut 'Jarvis' AI assistant next month

SAN FRANCISCO - Next month, Mark Zuckerberg hopes to offer the world a glimpse at his pet project, a face- and voice-recognition system that allows the Facebook CEO 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, the CEO's latest town hall Q and A session.

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"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 that 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).

AI is also on the front burner at companies such as Google, Amazon and Apple, all of whom hope to leverage the deep learning capabilities of modern computers to create a future where people get help with personal and professional tasks from machines. Many experts predict that self-driving cars will be the first AI-powered robots to interact with humans on a mass scale.

Zuckerberg, who during his Italian holiday also met with Pope Francis, told the crowd that his front gate is programmed to open as soon as it detects his voice or face.

"There's some state of the art AI in there," he said. "It's been awesome to get a chance to work with our engineers at Facebook and really see on a day to day experience what they're doing and how far advanced the work is that they're doing. It's been a really cool experience so far, and I'm looking forward to showing it off next month."

Follow USA TODAY tech reporter  Marco Della Cava @marcodellacava.