Quick — how many chatbots do you know? The term may have thrown you, but I’ll bet you know at least one.
Apple’sSiri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google’s nameless Google Assistant are all chatbots. These virtual assistants, and the thousands of lesser known ones, are poised to take over internet communication.
Countless companies are busy creating their own chatbots to provide better customer service, offer health care and provide shopping advice. Individuals are creating chatbots to build their own online brands.
Last month, developers livestreamed a chat between two Google Homes (the main rival to Amazon’s Echo), which caught the fancy of thousands of viewers and the popular press. “They don’t always make sense, but they sure are hilarious,” wrote Engadget, calling the exchange a “bot showdown.” Although this incident shows the relative infancy of the technology, it won’t be long until many of us will spend more time talking to chatbots than to humans.
In a nutshell, chatbots are computer programs that mimic conversation with people by using artificial intelligence. They are powered by rules and can evolve as they learn the speech habits of their users. As with Google Assistant, a chatbot can connect with a vast data reservoir — everything that’s in Google’s database — to provide answers to questions. Without such a database, the chatbot’s side of the conversation can be pretty limited. But the more specific a chatbot’s task is, the less it needs to know.
For instance, last fall Baidu, China’s equivalent to Google, launched health-care chatbot Melody to help patients decide whether or not to see their doctor in person.
Melody integrates with the Baidu Doctor app, which lets patients ask doctors questions, make appointments and search for health information. Melody takes a leap forward and asks the patient preliminary questions. She then pulls relevant data from medical textbooks, research papers, online forums and other health-care sources to create a list of treatment options. And that’s where a real physician steps in to review the options before they are transmitted to the patient. The more routine queries can usually be handled in this way. You can bet that chatbots will soon come to U.S. health-care providers.
Aside from talking to chatbots on your phone or a smart speaker, how do you get in touch with other chatbots? Here are several to try:
— Skype has created a guide on its website that includes a list of available bots, such as health-care advisers, travel assistants and game partners. For Windows users, select the Add Bots icon to see the list and then click your selections to add them to your contacts. When you want to chat with a bot, click its name just as you would a human contact.
— CNN was among the first publishers to launch a news bot, and it is available within Facebook Messenger, which introduced bots last June. From your computer, go to the CNN bot page (https://botlist.co/bots/603-cnn), click on Messenger to open it inside the Facebook messaging app. When you want to search the news, click CNN from your contact list and then “Get Started.” CNN will ask if you’d like the top stories every day and you can type a particular topic of interest into the message box for an instant news result. Although it would be just as easy to search for a topic on CNN’s website, this will give you a good idea of the conversational interface available.
— For fun, try Streak Trivia, a Facebook bot that sends out a trivia question every afternoon to anyone who has chatted with it before. Whoever gets the answer right will get another question; those who give the wrong answer are dropped from the game. Last player standing wins that day’s game.
— Because finding bots can be tricky on Messenger and other platforms, you may appreciate a central repository. Try botlist.co, which lists available bots by platform and by category. I found Forkable, who promises to find and deliver an office team lunch as many times a week as I’d like, Probot who answers tax questions and Foreign Buddy to help learn English, Spanish, French, German and Italian.
Of course, it’s one thing if you know you’re chatting with a bot, but it’s another when a bot is posing as a human, which happens on dating sites and with fraudulent services. Next week, we’ll talk about how to spot a bot.
Leslie Meredith has been writing about and reviewing personal technology for the past eight years. She has designed and manages several international websites and now runs the marketing for a global events company. As a mom of four, value, usefulness and online safety take priority. Have a question? Email Leslie at [email protected]
