[danso]

I've always been bearish about the appeal of chatbots but I did see how they could seem to be a useful interface for many users, especially on support-type sites. They basically seemed to function as a friendlier-version of site search. Yes, ultimately they are an unnecessary middleman facade -- in the same that writing a Google search as a formal question -- e.g. "Where are the best pizza places near me?" -- is unnecessary when you could simply query "best pizza"

But perhaps the perception that your question was being interpreted in an intelligent human way caused users to think differently and rephrase their questions in a way that made it easier to find the most relevant help/support links? I remember how interesting Ask Jeeves seemed to be -- though to be fair, Google wasn't much of a presence in 1997.

[EGreg]

The killer app for chatbots is voice.

That's about it.

[ryanianian]

If they get good enough, I can totally imagine them being keyboard-driven too. I'd love to be able to just type a quick "email" saying "order paper towels" when I'm at work and not have to shout into my phone in a quiet office.

(To be sure, the tech for a lot of this already exists they're just not exposing a text-based version.)

I wouldn't want to be quite as verbose for a text-based version, but oftentimes it really is easier to type more versus less if you're confident the recipient will read and parse the intent of the whole phrase.