Google's New Chatbot Won't Shut Up--And That's a Good Thing

You could talk at them--or, really, type at them--and they'd respond like computers. You didn't expect them to. Wednesday at Google I/O, the company's blockbuster annual conference, the company unveiled two new artificially intelligent products--a messaging app called Allo and an Amazon Echo-like device called Google Home--that rely on a "conversational user interface." You talk, they talk back… and they do what you tell them, and maybe more. Conversational user interfaces aren't a new idea; computer scientists have been experimenting with the technology for decades, but they've found new life in virtual assistants like Apple's Siri and chatbot-inhabited messenger apps like Facebook Messenger.