Michal Marek After the first day of the big F8 conference hosted by Facebook, we can safely say that the era of chatbots has officially started. Facebook believes that its Messenger can become the primary communication channel between companies and their customers, which is helped by bots that, by combining artificial intelligence and human intervention, will create the most reliable means of providing customer care and a gateway to purchases of all kinds.
The tools that Facebook presented at the conference include an API that allows developers to create chat bots for Messenger and special chat widgets designed for the web interface. Most of the attention was paid to commerce in relation to the news.
Conference participants could see, for example, how flowers can be ordered using natural language through Messenger. However, bots will also have their uses in the world of media, where they will be able to provide users with prompt, personalized news. A bot of the well-known CNN news channel was presented as evidence.
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Facebook is not the first company to come up with something similar. For example, the communication service Telegram or the American Kik have already brought their shoes. But Facebook has a huge advantage over its competition in the size of its user base. Messenger is used by 900 million people a month, and that's a number that its competitors can only envy. In this respect, it is surpassed only by the billion WhatsApp, which is also under the wings of Facebook.
So Facebook clearly has the power to push chatbots into our lives, and few doubt that it will succeed. There are even opinions that tools of this kind will be the biggest opportunity in software development since Apple opened its App Store.
We are seeing the end of all e-shop "Can we help you?" pop-ups and the future of sales support and help desk. Thanks for putting this together! :)
And people will have nothing to eat
If someone would like to start designing their own Bot, we have made a UI Kit for Sketch where you can design your own: https://bots.mockuuups.com/
I'm looking forward to the first Czech-speaking robot in Messenger :)