This is how I picture a bot. GIF source: GIPHY
Messaging app Line today started allowing businesses to use AI-powered bots to interact with their fans and customers.
Bots can now answer questions and give responses via a company’s official Line account. You could ask for nearby food recommendations, for example, by simply typing the area you’re in. Then the brand’s bot would fire back with suggestions, ratings, and maps – as shown in the example below supplied by Line.
Line Corp CEO Takeshi Idezawa last month said that bots would soon arrive in the social media app as part of a raft of new ideas. During his keynote at Line Conference Tokyo 2016, he also revealed Line would launch a mobile internet service and a prepaid debit card that ties to Line Pay. All these new features are confined to Line’s home market, Japan.
Line today opened its bot API trial program to 10,000 corporate users who can make use of their own AI-based systems inside the messaging app. Line will permit bots that can be used for customer interaction, Siri-esque search and suggestions, as well as to control smart home gadgets.
Tokyo-based Line Corp said in an announcement today that it reserves the right to shut down a bot at any time if something goes wrong. Earlier this month, Microsoft got a lesson in bot badassery as its Twitter-based AI named Tay, designed to mimic a human teen, went off the rails. Shortly after Tay came online, it was led astray by mischievous Twitterers, who soon had the bot professing its love of sex, drugs, and Hitler. And, even worse, Donald Trump.
To avoid that kind of disaster, Line is limiting the experimental bots to accounts that have no more than 50 followers.
Editing by Meghna Rao and Terence Lee
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