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Chat Robots, Chatbots, Bots

What is a chatbot?

Conversational AI

• ..is tough! but we have seen this before!
• As for many technologies (and AI itself), the vision is often over-hyped and reality reveals the challenges

Chatbots as
"Mobile Apps"

Chatbots as Mobile Apps

• Messaging mobile apps, e.g., Facebook Messenger, have most of the UI elements that one needs to build a mobile app: Button, List, Text-box, Images, etc

Chatbots as Mobile Apps

• While the AI vision aims at chatbots that you talk and ask them anything, a practical alternative is the familiar "screen-based" mobile app experience

• This is an "app-in-app" experience: instead of downloading a different app for every case, e.g., brand or service, the user can just "talk to" the corresponding persona in the chat app
• Let's see some examples!

Burberry

• Many brands have a Facebook page

• This already allows to get messages on Messenger

Burberry

• It is natural then to add a chatbot as a "smart answering machine" that gives digital marketing content and gives basic information

Tommy Hilfinger

• More advanced ones may offer personalized content based on a quick interview

Chatbots as Mobile Apps

• The fashion business has embraced social media and digital marketing and is very active on such solutions

• Many other cases too:

  • News

  • Retail

  • Travel

  • Celebrities

  • Sports

  • Games

  • ...

Kayak

• Very similar to what you would do on the website or the mobile app, with a touch of natural language

Hi Poncho

• Popular chatbots offer a chat experience with emoticons, animated GIFs, chat slang, etc

Chatbots as Mobile Apps

Links to the ones we saw:

• Burberry
• Tommy Hilfiger

• Kayak

• Hi Poncho

• Nearbot

You can find and try some more on chatbot listings such as ChatBottle, BotList

OK, but how do you build a chatbot?

Chatbot Development

Types of chatbots

• On one side mobile apps-in-apps

• On the other side conversational AIs

Types of chatbots

• A lot of tools for building chatbots!

Chatbots as Mobile Apps

A lot of chatbots recast existing solutions such as:

• website, e.g., showing information about a catalog
• blog, e.g., showing recent news on topics
• webapp for an online service, e.g., giving ingormation about the weather
• e-shop, e.g., for buying clothes and shoes
• customer support, e.g., answering based on FAQ
• assistant, e.g., booking appointments
• ...

Chatbots as Mobile Apps

Many tools for developing simple chatbots, based on adding content and following templates:

• https://chatfuel.com/
• https://www.motion.ai/
• https://octaneai.com/
• http://www.converse.ai/
• https://www.firebot.io/en
• https://www.botplatform.io/
• https://flowxo.com/
• ...

Limitations

• The conversation aspect needs to be very minimal and very curated as it is "one-shot" or "no-memory"
• Templates work well for "static" responses if we need the bot to use information from dynamic databases, custom solutions need to be developed by experts

• This is where you need to talk to Chatbot Developing experts ;)

Conversational AI

A practical approach that works:

• Intent detection based on examples: whatever the user says, the systems map it to one of a small number of curated cases of intents

• Authored responses for each detected intent

Conversational AI

A practical approach that works:

• Parameter detection allows for more tailored responses; a lot of pre-trained tools allow to detect common entities such as dates, numbers, colors, etc

• Typically some programming skills are needed 

Conversational AI

• Facebook Wit.ai
• Microsoft Bot Framework
• Google Api.ai
• Amazon Lex
• Open source: Rasa.ai

Limitations

• The existing developing tools are closer to offerring a "Conversational AI" but still it is far away from a system that understands any question 
• Lots of simple things that cannot be handled, e.g.,
  "Is X false?" cannot be handled automatically by means of handling "Is X true?" 

• This is where you need to talk to AI experts ;)

Authoring

• If people go off-script, you'll get lots of default answers which makes the experience bad
• Authors need to handle the "look and feel" of the converstaion, i.e., the "Chatting UX"

Authoring

Chatting, Texting, Messaging

People communicate more in "text" than in "voice"

*Especially young people!

**Millennials: 20-40 years old at time of writing (2017)

Talking to friends

Talking to friends

Why do people like communicating like this anyway?

• Asynchronous: keeps you connected with friends through ongoing conversations while being at another context, e.g., at work
• Fast: perfect for quick information, e.g., "Send me your address"
• Groups: great for arranging plans for dinner, drinks, hobbies, trips, etc
• Multimedia: pictures, emoticons, stickers, GIFs! 
• Casual: easier when talking to people you know less

Talking to companies

Talking to companies

When a company contacts a customer by texting:

• Less invasive than receiving a phone call: people feel more comfortable in asynchronous and anonymous communication
• Normal: people are used to talk like this everyday 
• Personal: people feel they are treated better! e.g., compared to receiving a more "dry" email

Chatting is big

Some platforms are bigger than others

Some platforms are bigger than others

Takeaways

Chatbots are a new channel

• Targets a large demographic (Millennials)

• Can be seen as an additional channel along with Website, Social Media, Mobile Apps

• As the mobile platform is dominating the way we consume information (e.g., in comparison to desktop PCs) the chatbot medium can become "the new website"; it's already "the new mobile app"

Chatbots are easy to build

• Plenty of DIY solutions for common use cases

• Plenty of developers available for custom solutions

• There is a hype similar to the "mobile app craze", you can't go wrong with building one now ;) 

Chatbots are hard to build

• AI is over-hyped and in reality it needs a lot of effort to build "human-like" assistants

• No real guidelines for Conversational UX yet!

• Content is king (here as well)!

• Similar to website design and development: it's the narrative and the experience that matters ;-)

• Custom solutions need an expert team to handle all aspects well

Chatbots are a new medium

• This is just the beginning!

• Every month the big platforms release more features (Facebook Messenger is leading)

• Group chat with chatbots

• C2C (Chatbot to Chatbot) communication

• Chatting as a common API

• Hybrid chatbot and human operator ecosystems