What is a chat bot? Is it a gimmick or genuinely useful?

Once, a messenger app did just that —message. But with the rise of artificial intelligence, tech companies are falling over themselves to prove how much more useful and interactive their apps can be  — which is why you’re about to see an explosion of “bots”.

Kik, the mobile chat application popular with teenagers, launched its Bot Shop recently. For Kik, chat bots are the next step in the evolution of the internet. “First there were websites, then there were apps. Now, there are bots,” the company’s developer kit boasts.

What are chat bots?
Chat bots are computer programmes that mimic conversation with people using artificial intelligence. They can transform the way you interact with the internet from a series of self-initiated tasks to a quasi-conversation.

The Kik Bot Store is launching with 16 bots, including the Weather Channel, H&M, Vine and Funny or Die.     
     
But the open platform will allow developers to add their own, as long as they comply with Kik’s teen-centric standards. Without a chat bot, a user            might direct his browser to weather.com, then type in their zip code to get the forecast. With the Kik’s Weather Channel bot, a user can send a chat asking for “Current Conditions” or a “3-Day Forecast” and the bot will reply with your answer.

How good is it?
The weather bot is smart – it remembers your zip code – but not too smart. Ask it “How hot is it?” and the bot prompts you to stick to its prescribed inputs (“Current Conditions”; “3-Day Forecast” etc).

The weather bot also has its own pre-programmed, passive-aggressive personality. When you turn off its suggested function of sending you a chat with the day’s weather every morning at 7am (a tad early, but thanks), it replies: “Tired of me pinging you super useful info every morning? Well, fine! Just let me know when you miss me ;-)”.

Kik’s Vine bot simply asks what kind of Vines you might want to see, then sends you something it thinks you might like – a video-centric spin on Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.

The H&M bot injects an inquisitive sales associate into your online shopping experience. First the bot prompts you to teach it about your style through a series of questions, then it starts to recommend outfits.

If you like an article of clothing, the H&M bot sends you to its mobile website to buy it. But it’s not hard to imagine that soon you’ll be able to chat, “Charge it to my Visa and ship it overnight to my home address.”

What else can they do?
At the moment, chat bots are basically replacing individual apps. Rather than closing Facebook Messenger and opening Uber, you can simply message Uber and ask for a ride.

San Francisco-based startup Assist is a chat bot that folds a host of services — including hailing a ride, ordering delivery, buying baseball tickets, scheduling a hair cut and sending flowers — into a single chat contact.

Rather than download individual apps to Uber, Postmates, Seamless, Opentable, Stubhub, Florist One and Great Clips, a user can simply send a chat to Assist from inside his preferred chat platform (Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, or Kik) and tell Assist what he wants.

If you prefer the feel of sending a text to filling out a field, you’ll prefer the chat bot experience.

What could go wrong?
In a word, Tay. In March, Microsoft launched a Twitter chatbot named “Tay” that was supposed to have conversations with Twitter users and learn how to sound like a “millennial”.

Instead, it learned how to love Hitler and hate feminism.

Tay is an object lesson in how artificial intelligence can be “taught” all the wrong things. Fortunately, the humans who build the bots appear to have learned some lessons: if you chat “Hitler” to Kik’s Vine bot, it responds, “Sorry we’re keeping this PG-13. Try again!”