What Are Conversational Bots?

What Are Conversational Bots?

by Jon Bruner, Mike Barlow
Released September 2016
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781491972632

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Book description

Artificial intelligence has made enormous progress in the last five years, and after a decade of texting and messaging on smartphones, people have become comfortable with conversational interfaces. Put together, those two trends mean we’ll soon be chatting with conversational bots: intelligent software designed to make you feel as though you’re talking to a real person. Chatbots are able to automate human tasks by translating fluidly between unstructured language and structured data. Imagine a customer service chat via instant message, email, or voice where the bot has answers before you can ask the question.

In this report, authors Jon Bruner and Mike Barlow examine the promise of chatbots, as well as the challenges they face. Driven by recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots have a bright future in customer relations, healthcare, games and entertainment, and worker productivity (picture a bot as your personal assistant). Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently declared that, "bots are the new apps."

Browse this report and explore today’s emerging chatbot landscape, including:

  • Why chatbots now?—Understand the factors behind the rise of bots, some of their use cases, and questions still to be answered.
  • Messaging platforms/frameworks for bots—Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Facebook Messenger, Google Now and Google Assistant, Microsoft Bot Framework, and more
  • AI Platforms and Frameworks for bots—Api.ai, Google TensorFlow, IBM Watson Conversation, Wit.ai, and scikit-learn
  • Real-world examples—Burger King, Fidelity Investments, Amtrak, Cobalt (CRM), Troops, and more

Product information

  • Title: What Are Conversational Bots?
  • Author(s): Jon Bruner, Mike Barlow
  • Release date: September 2016
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781491972632