"Bots are the new apps," declared Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in 2016, and they're certainly on the rise. Read more: Apps are dying. Long live the subservient bots ready to fulfil your every desire
With the app boom well and truly over, tech firms are turning to conversational AI chatbots to freshen up their messaging platforms.
From pizza delivery to helping asylum seekers, the skillsets bots are being equipped with are getting wider all the time. Here's our pick of the best bots available now.
London's transport organisation has introduced a Messenger bot to help people discover timetables for the busses and tube trains they travel on. The bot, available here or by searching for TfL travelBot on the Messenger app, uses Transport for London data to collect service times and can be spoken to using national language commands. The tool can be used to see when the next bus will arrive (if location data is shared), find out about disruptions on bus routes, download Tube maps and see if there are disruptions on the London Underground, Overground, DLR, and trams.
Microsoft recently teamed up with Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal to produce a bot for Skype. The Heston Bot is full of culinary knowledge and will offer up cooking tips, flavour pairings and bite-sized anecdotes from the celebrity chef to turn users into kitchen pros. The foodie bot works on the latest version of Skype across Windows, Mac, iOS, Android or the web.
Illustrating the good that bots can do, DoNotPay is offering free legal aid to people seeking asylum in the US and Canada by helping them complete immigration forms. It also offers asylum support for those in the UK. The original web-based robo lawyer was created by British Stanford University student Joshua Browder to help people challenge and overturn their parking fines. Following its success, Browder explored how the robot lawyer could be used for humanitarian causes.
Transferring money to friends and family overseas is now a little easier thanks to a recently launched Facebook Messenger chatbot from TransferWise. Rather than having to separately fire up the TransferWise app, users can now send money directly. Cash can be sent between people in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and Europe and the finance bot asks just four questions for each transfer: where do you want to send money from, where is the money going, who is it going to, and how will it be funded?
Still part of an experimental trial, this bot from the NHS is designed to provide an alternative to the non-emergency 111 number. The six-month trial among more than 1.2 million people in Camden, Islington, Enfield and Barnet involves patients typing their symptoms into the smartphone app and receiving a response based on a database of illnesses.
Match.com recently launched what it claims is the first dating chatbot for Messenger in the UK. 'Lara' is designed to guide users through setting up a profile by quizzing them on their preferences to produce a list of potential matches. These profile links are sent to the user without them having to leave the messaging app.
Following the disastrous launch of its Tay AI, which quickly went rogue and starting spouting offensive slurs, Microsoft launched a new bot at the end of last year. Unlike its predecessor, Zo is available by invitation only on messaging app Kik. According to Microsoft, users can chat to Zo "in the same way you would interact with a friend".
In 2016, Domino's introduced a bot to make ordering a pizza faster. All users need to do is set up an 'easy order' on their account, detailing their usual preferences and message 'pizza' to DOM The Pizza bot on Messenger. Currently it's only possible to re-order your 'easy order' choices rather than create a new combination of options.
Continuing on the pizza theme, those wanting to go out for Italian food can now book a table using the Pizza Express Messenger bot. The company says it's possible to make a reservation in just over 60 seconds.
For something a touch more intellectual, National Geographic created an Albert Einstein chatbot to promote its Genius programme about the famous physicist. The chatbot teaches the user about Einstein's life, using a mixture of text-based responses, images and GIFs. It's fairly basic but shows how AI bots can be used as an educational tool.
This web-based chatbot was awarded the annual Loebner Prize twice – in 2013 and 2106 – for being the most humanlike chatbot around. Billed as a "virtual friend", Mitsuku can answer questions, play games and do tricks at the user's request, and is capable of basic reasoning. It is also available on Kik Messenger.
BBC Worldwide and Skype recently launched a Doctor Who Bot. Users "talk" to the Doctor who sets challenges to complete. The bot includes logic puzzles, and quizzes, revolving around the search for an artefact known as the Key To Time.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
