In recent weeks, a term has appeared frequently in the plans for the future drawn up by tech giants: bots. Microsoft have already made their platforms official, but Google, Apple and Amazon are also preparing to compete in this market. But what exactly are these bots? c4u16
Bots
As the term itself suggests, bots are automated systems, programmed to perform certain tasks automatically by the . There are several types of bots and they have been around for some time.
Among the most well-known are Microsoft Office's infamous Clippy, which relentlessly offered help but was rarely helpful, and the digital assistants Siri and Cortana. systems for unsubscribing newsletters, where the must reply to the email with a keyword like “Cancel”, are also a (very simple) form of bots.
Another example, found mainly on Twitter, are bots used to generate mass tweets and leverage some topic to the site's list of most discussed topics (Twitter claims to fight this type of fraud).
Chatbots
The bots that Facebook is deploying in Messenger and Microsoft wants to extend to a number of messaging apps are technically known as chatbots because the interaction with the system is done by chat, using written or spoken language.
As most s spend most of their time on their smartphone using messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Skype, Slack, Telegram and the aforementioned Messenger, companies saw in bots an opportunity to offer resources directly through these services.
If, to get what they want, the can replace the process of navigating through various applications or websites – with different experiences – for a simple conversation with a bot in a familiar interface, logic indicates that he will opt for this convenience (since for the bot to work).
The new generation of bots promises to be more useful and reliable than the current one due to the improvement in the interpretation of human language by computers and the processing power of modern datacenters, which allows the execution of more complex activities.
But what do they do?
Facebook and Microsoft have put a lot of emphasis on bots focused on selling products and services (demos included ordering pizza, calling an Uber, booking a hotel, and ordering flowers via chat), but these aren’t the only functions. that they can play.
Some of the most interesting examples are informational bots that warn you when it's raining, display news on a topic that interests the , automatically schedule appointments and even alert you when it's time to pay a bill that is about to be due.
The future?
An unresolved question is how Facebook, Microsoft and any other company offering a bot platform intends to make money from it. Ads would be a possibility, but it is also likely that platforms will start charging a percentage of transactions carried out through the system – similar to what happens today with app stores.
It is worth noting that very few bots actually behave as expected. Let Microsoft say so, which was vexed last month when a bot launched by the company's research department it became a parrot of racist, sexist and genocidal messages in less than 24 hours of public exposure on Twitter.
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One of the great lessons learned from the tree of smartphones and tablets in the last decade is that being the first to adopt a technology is not enough: the execution of the idea is what defines whether or not the public will embrace the innovation. It has to be easy and it has to work.
Where do I start?
For those who want to try it, the site Bot List gathers a collection of bots available for various messaging apps, but unfortunately many understand only English. The same goes for the Skype bots offered on Microsoft page.
In the coming months, it is believed, Google, Apple and Amazon will also reveal strategies to enter this market. With companies of this size making such high stakes, 2016 is set to become the year we were conquered by an army of bots.
