The Robots Are Coming

Understanding AI & the chatbot opportunity

R O B OT S !

E V E R Y W H E R E !

Remember Microsoft’s Clippy? Well, thanks to algorithms, bots suddenly seem cool again. With all that big data at our disposal, and a suite of mobile-first messaging apps to live in, the 2.0 era of interactive bots stands to not only stick around, but entirely change the way we experience content. Suddenly navigation seems a little outdated.

David Look - Optimizing for Love: How Sentiment & Emotion Are Evolving Online

Chatbot (n) A piece of software that you text with to get things done or be entertained

Messaging is the new browser, and bots are

the new websites.““

Mike Roberts , Head of Messaging @ Kik , sa id this :

For the first time, messaging apps are more popular than

social networks

CHATBOTS LIVE INSIDE MESSAGING

APPS

O R I N T E X T

M E S S A G E S !

Messaging apps are where people spend

their time online. Chatbots are a way to

reach them.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

By 2020, Gartner predicts that customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.

The new generation of chatbots are intelligent….

(Artificially Intelligent)

But chatbots are only as smart as the words you feed them.

?

?

??

? ?

(That’s why Microsoft had to take down Tay after just 24 hours.)

!

!

!!

! !

- Microsoft (March 2016)

Chatbots "learn" to do things by trawling through a huge swath of information. They are designed to spot patterns and repeat actions associated with them when triggered by key words, phrases or other stimuli. They seem clever, but they're not.

This means that if the input is poor, or repeats questionable statements, the chatbot's behaviour will evolve accordingly. Andrew Masterton - Hate Siri? Meet Viv - The Future of Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence

Chatbots need training, and users need to be carefully onboarded so that they understand the constraints of the software they’re interacting with. But even with these limitations, reducing complicated, confusing processes down to a natural conversation is potentially very powerful.

Imagine how much simpler doing your taxes, booking a vacation or learning how to use a complicated piece of software could be with a friendly robo-advisor on hand to help you through the process.

Think about ordering a pizza…The fastest way to order a pizza is to call the restaurant and verbally place your order. Apps are more private, and remove the pressure of speaking to a live person, but they’re more time consuming than picking up the phone.

A PizzaBot that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) offers the best of both worlds. It’s a fast, convenient and conversational way for you to get your slice.

Thanks NLP!

Our primary mode of communication is

texting.

Chatbots let you talk to your users in the way they know best.

Worldwide, we send 23 Billion text messages every single day. Texting is the most widely used app on any smartphone, and 90% of texts received are read in under 3 minutes.

Messaging apps are taking over from SMS as the most popular place for all of this text-based communication. WhatsApp, the most popular messaging apps, reported that they’re now handling 30 Billion messages daily. That’s huge.

Chatbots are a way of connecting with your users without having to get them to install an app.

Guess how many apps the average American downloaded last month?

ZERO.

?? ??

It’s potentially a huge business opportunity for anyone willing

to jump headfirst and build something people want.“

“

Matt Schl icht (Editor, ChatBots Magazine)

Facebook reports that more than 10,000 developers are already experimenting with chatbots on their platform.

And Slack, the world’s fastest-growing business tool, is investing $80 Million in new Slack Bot startups

Brands are already taking the chatbot plunge. These companies have all released chatbots into the wild.

It’s the beginning of a brand new era – there was web, then mobile,

apps and now bots. It is an incredibly powerful paradigm

shift.““

David Marcus, Head of Facebook Messenger, sa id this :

AI chatbots are becoming a part of the product mix

alongside web and mobile apps.

(That’s right. The robots really are coming.)

Today, bots are better at texting than talking. But

speech recognition technology is rapidly improving.

Talking to bots will soon be commonplace, thanks to a new breed of always-on home assistants like Alexa and Google Home.

D I D Y O U K N O W T H A T T H E A V E R A G E H U M A N S P E A K S 1 5 0 W O R D S A M I N U T E , B U T C A N O N L Y T Y P E 4 0 ?

“I see speech approaching a point where it could become so reliable that you can just use it and not even think

about it.““

Andrew Ng: Chief Scient ist @ Baidu

What we’re seeing is an explosion of apps that no longer have a graphical user interface.

2016 is the year of all things conversational.

So, does your business need a bot?

A chatbot is a piece of software you can use to solve real problems for your users.

It could be easy to dismiss the new breed of bots apps as distracting novelties, or as the next wave of Silicon Valley hype. But the potential for well-crafted chatbots to add real value is there.

Designing useful and ideally delightful chatbot experiences will take investment and careful planning. Don’t expect an AI chatbot to transform your business overnight (or to rise up and take over the world anytime soon).

Instead, think of it as a logical next step in your product strategy. A well-orchestrated chatbot gives users a way to communicate with you directly, in the way that suits them best. It might also allow you to get more value from APIs that you’ve already built. But as always, the trick is to start by aligning the goals of your business with the needs, wants and desires of your customers.

If you want to keep exploring the botpportunity, we can help.

We’ve been building great software for startups and enterprises since 2002.

Understanding our clients’ users and customers

Working with world leaders in innovation

Exploring new business opportunities around emerging technology

And we’ve built more than a few chatbots along the way.

Our team combines NLP expertise with a human-centered approach to designing software. That means we know how to define, build and train chatbots that your customers will love to use.

To test out an online poker engine we built for one of our clients, we decided to prototype directly inside Slack. The result was a PokerBot with an impeccable poker face.

M E E T S O M E O F O U R C H A T B OT S

PokerBot: A chatbot poker dealer that lives in Slack

PopBot: A curatorial photobot for Kik

Long before Kik launched their public Bot Shop, they were building experimental chatbots with TWG. We built a Kik bot that “listens” to your photos and creates galleries based on your preferences.

M E E T S O M E O F O U R C H A T B OT S

Markov lives in the wilds of TWG’s internal Slack channel. He’s still a baby bot, but soon he’ll be able to help us find resources and information by sharing what members of our team might say about a particular topic.

MarkovBot: TWG’s very own bot-in-training

M E E T S O M E O F O U R C H A T B OT S

( Y o u c o u l d a l s o a s k u s a b o u t t h a t t i m e w e u s e d S l a c k t o t u r n o u r

d i s h w a s h e r i n t o a r o b o t )😄

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