[hackuser]

Unless I misunderstand, conversational commerce bots seem to want to solve the problem of the interface between users' natural language and software's logic (i.e., it's an application of NLP).

But I doubt AI will be good enough to do that, and I expect that I'll still have to think about fitting my words to the software's understanding. Why would these bots work better than Siri?

[natrius]

They will work far better than Siri because they have a constrained world to work in. Every call center has scripts for their predefined scenarios. AI chat bots navigate a world that fits in a book, but Siri has to navigate the whole world.

[LouisSayers]

In my mind it's not really solving any 'problem' at all... We have a browser, and we have Google... It's generally pretty easy to buy stuff online, so what's the problem??

[hackuser]

I know several people who lack the skills to buy things online. For others it's a chore. Finally, what if by lowering the barriers for customers, you could increase sales 5%? 10%?

[LouisSayers]

Sure, it *might increase conversions - I'd hope that FB have tested this assumption... Will be interesting to see how this turns out