Facebook is making a chatbot that can fill awkward silences

There are a lot of things that chatbots have yet to master and high on the list is small talk. But researchers at Facebook think the best way to make software prattle away is to give it a personality. Workers were asked to chat in pairs and to give statements describing themselves, including their likes and dislikes. The crowdworkers' chatter was linked to these description statements and used to train the chatbots.