Chatbots: The Next Internet Revolution?
Your next internet conversation might just be with a bot.
Anyone who’s ever tried online dating or spent time on a message board may have harbored suspicions that a particular correspondent isn’t who they claim to be. When it comes to corporate or sales websites, this sense of dislocation can be taken one step further as we might not actually be speaking to a human being at all. Instead, we may be in conversation with one of the internet’s next big things – chatbots.
What Is A Chatbot?
A chatbot is a text-based algorithmic service designed to assist people with simple tasks like booking a restaurant table or calling a breakdown truck. The bot is programmed to present itself as a human, offering friendly greetings and often adopting a (usually female) name. In some cases, there may even be real people standing by in a call center if the bot is unable to resolve a particular query. However, this human safety net is seen as a temporary measure while artificial intelligence models learn how to resolve and understand the myriad queries consumers may come up with.
What Will Chatbots Do?
It would be tempting to dismiss chatbots as the 21st-century equivalent of the talking car dashboard or automated call center menu guide, and conclude that automation will never replace human interaction. Nevertheless, it appears bots are here to stay. Web experts reverentially discuss them in the same terms used to describe apps at the start of this decade, championing bots as a game-changing evolution in the internet. There has been a meteoric rise in the number of companies developing and marketing bots over the last year, and ‘bot shops’ have been created to supply companies with bespoke services.
Early Stage Chatbots
Many chatbots have very specific functions, such as displaying online bank account information or distributing messages via Telegram – a new communications platform that could perhaps be described as WhatsApp for professionals. However, the breakneck pace of evolution could eventually see bots rivalling apps as a means of checking information or completing simple tasks. Many of the apps we use every day are also narrow in focus – checking train times, booking cinema tickets, and so forth. Talking to a chatbot may involve nothing more than sending a text message, and having your request or instruction confirmed in reply. This already happens to some degree with text message charity donations and automated appointment reminders.
Next Gen Bots
With Apple and Google dominating the market for apps, arch-rivals Microsoft and Facebook view bots as a way to level the playing field. Both companies are investing heavily in what is being referred to as the ‘bot economy’, with Facebook offering coding tools and Microsoft promoting a bot-building framework. Unlike apps, bots are hosted on servers rather than being installed onto a device, plus they make no demands for access to a device’s camera and contacts list, which could be a key marketing benefit as privacy concerns grow.
Apps may be more useful for some tasks, with bots superior in other areas – rather like apps and websites today. Some bots (and developers) will be more successful than others, and there will be a few high-profile casualties as the industry matures and AI models advance. It seems unlikely that chatbots will replace apps, but it’s almost inevitable that both methods of interaction will play a significant role in our daily lives in the not too distant future.