Fred Wilson has a short post on the state of chat bots. Surprise, surprise – chat bots haven’t taken over the world. One of the main culprits? Artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing are not there yet. I’m happy to see these posts that combat much of the hype surrounding chat bots and take a more realistic look at where we’re at and where we might be headed.
I do think chat bots will continue to see growth, both in the number of people using them and in the capabilities of the bots and platforms that host them. With so many people using text messages (in whatever their choice of messaging service is), it makes sense that a lot of interactions should happen within the messaging/chat context. I’m mostly impressed with bots targeting teams/groups at this point, but I might be biased. Bots make a lot of sense in that setting because they can quickly help everyone in the group. A simple example would be the group lunch. Getting agreement on when and where to eat can take a miracle. There are bots to help simplify that process. Again, a simple example, but there are many more out there where teams are more productive due to having information and the ability to take action on something within the flow of a chat. Little to none of this requires AI or natural language processing. Those technologies are getting a lot of attention and investment. It’s only a matter of time before chat bots make use of them in a way that makes sense.
Are chat bots THE NEXT BIG THING? Probably not. They’re a nice step in making chat smarter and better. I think they’ll grow in importance for some use cases and shrink for others. As Fred pointed out in his post, it’s (already) past the hype cycle for chat bots and into the figuring it out phase.