Mark Zuckerberg plans to build his own AI personal assistant

'You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man,' says Facebook chief

Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has announced plans to build his own artificial intelligence assistant to help him at home and at work as one of his major goals for the new year.

"My personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work," he wrote in a blog post and likened the idea of an AI assistant to Jarvis from Iron Man.

Zuckerberg - a computer programmer by trade - said he'd share updates on his progress as the year goes on and outlined how he intends to begin his personal challenge of building an AI.

"I'm going to start by exploring what technology is already out there. Then I'll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home - music, lights, temperature and so on," he explained.

According to Zuckerberg, the AI will use facial recognition technology to identify friends and colleagues at his door.

"I'll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell," he wrote, and explained that he also wants the AI to help him and his wife look after their daughter.

"I'll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max's room that I need to check on when I'm not with her," said Zuckerberg.

However, the Facebook founder pointed out that the AI won't only be designed to help him at home.

"On the work side, it'll help me visualize data in VR to help me build better services and lead my organizations more effectively," Zuckerberg said.

Facebook itself is increasingly dabbling with artificial intelligence and Zuckerberg has previously claimed that AI and virtual reality will be key services provided by the company within the next 10 years.

Indeed, the firm is already testing a virtual assistant dubbed 'Moneypenny', which has been touted as similar to the likes of Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Google Now and dozens of other apps in the virtual assistant space.