We Talk, It Acts: Conversational AI

2 min read

By Dan Wellers

June 3, 2020

Billions of people a day use instant messaging apps to share bite-sized chunks of information—not just with each other but also with chatbots, digital assistants, and other apps that use natural-language understanding.

That’s creating a new paradigm for interacting with technology.

Chatbots receive text queries from users through existing messaging applications instead of through separate apps.

Texting your technology

Basic chatbots use preprogrammed rules to perform an action, such as ordering product or answering a question about a customer problem. More sophisticated ones use machine learning to comprehend input based on previously ingested data.

Chatting with chatbots

General purpose digital assistants like Apple’s Siri and dedicated smart devices like Google Home can understand casual conversational requests, interact with other services, and answer at least partly open-ended questions through a single, natural interface.

By introducing deeper artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities, we are creating solutions that can learn from interactions and context and continually refine their behavior, much as humans do:

The vanishing interface

Eventually, most digital solutions will rely on natural language to communicate with and learn from users. We’ll just talk to our systems like they’re people.

We’ll say what we need, and the smart systems behind the scenes will determine how to deliver it, whether that’s running reports, providing customer support, or booking business travel.

The more we talk to our software, the smarter it will get. It will learn how we work and think, and it will adapt itself accordingly.

Current and potential use cases

Chatbots, digital personal assistants, and enterprise AI will make many services available in a frictionless, personal way, such as: