Chatbots deserve more than being a joke

In April 2017, Facebook launched the Messenger Bot Store. TechCrunch posited “Facebook’s Messenger Bot Store could be the most important launch since the App Store.” Less than nine months later at CES, Facebook announced M was dead. WIRED declared “Facebook’s virtual assistant M is dead. So are chatbots.” Despite these declarations, bots in some form were all over CES. Forrester Research’s JP Gownder noted “it’s the year of AI and conversational interfaces.” So which is it? Are bots alive? Dead? Have they mutated into something else like Sam Neill’s dinosaurs in Jurassic Park? The truth is, to the tech world,…

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