Landbot gets $2.2M for its on-message 'anti-AI' chatbot

Who needs AI to have a good conversation? Spanish startup Landbot has bagged a $2.2 million seed round for a'dumb' chatbot that doesn't use AI at all but offers something closer to an old school'choose your adventure' interaction by using a conversational choice interface to engage potential customers when they land on a website. The rampant popularity of consumer messaging apps has long been influencing product development decisions, and plenty of fusty business tools have been consumerized in recent years, including by having messaging-style interfaces applied to simplify all kinds of digital interactions. In the case of Landbot, the team is deploying a familiar rich texting interface as a website navigation tool -- meaning site visitors aren't left to figure out where to click to find stuff on their own. Instead they're pro-actively met with an interactive, adaptive messaging thread that uses conversational choice prompts to get them the information they need.