[octaveguin]

Does this signal a continued push for bots and conversational UX?

Where does the belief in the tech come from? Are there any examples of real success with this tech?

Bots can't solve discovery in a novel way without big advances in NLP. There doesn't seem to be a bridge from here to there where it makes sense as a user.

Is this just irrational exuberance?

I'd love to understand why microsoft/google/facebook are all continuing to bet big here.

[Disruptive_Dave]

> I'd love to understand why microsoft/google/facebook are all continuing to bet big here.

Because they can afford to. And because if you wait for success examples, you might just be too late.

[probe]

The bridge is a hybrid model where you can have humans responding and an AI in the back learning. With enough training data the hope is that the AI would take over and be able to do the tasks.

That being said, I actually haven't seen a successful implementation of a full transition from a hybrid to a chatbot example (maybe like x.ai or something, but nothing on a large scale). Think there is really good opportunity there for some basic tasks, but still see bots as glorified menu options for the time being.

Having worked at 2 of the firms you listed above and doing some deep V1 bot explorations for one of them, the immediate idea for bots in the short-term is to replace apps (which is not the best UI interaction model for tail-end apps)

[euyyn]

Do you mean discovery as in me figuring out which bots would I like to install from a "bots store"?

If so, I think Apple's approach in iMessage widgets is fantastic: If you send third-party content to a person that doesn't have the plugin installed, they'll also get a link to install it. So it boosts word-of-mouth.

[octaveguin]

I could have been clearer because you're right that it's ambiguous.

My sense of discovery was meant in the UI sort of respect. When a feature is hidden from the user, that feature might as well not exist.

Bots (and command lines, for that matter) are awful unless you know exactly what they're capable of. There is an extrinsic knowledge you need.

That is, you can't expect a bot to know whatever you throw at it but you're unsure what you /can/ expect it to know.

The problem is that command lines are sort of made for the expert users whereas bots are said to be the opposite.

[adyus]

The beauty of (NLP) bots is supposedly that you can just ask what they can do.

Whether that's a viable UX strategy is still up for debate.

[euyyn]

Ah, I agree. Bots need to understand language (within their domain) very broadly to be able and overcome that.

[rorykoehler]

I know of a few large scale projects successfully implementing conversational UX with huge economies of scale. Most of the customers haven't even realised they are talking to bots.

[probe]

Can you name a few (besides like Operator or Magic, which I don't even know would qualify since they're more hybrid)? I've done some explorations into bots for a project I worked on, and most of it just seems to be glorified menus.