Why Do Some Companies Have Humans Pretending to be Bots?

Artificial intelligence has become such a catchy selling point for online services that some companies have turned to a bit of sleight of hand -- and voice -- to convince people they have smart machines working for them. Several companies have employed humans to impersonate chatbots performing scheduling and other services. A prototype for Facebook's AI assistant for Messenger, called M, had people behind the curtain calling M's shots for two and a half years before taking humans out of the equation in January. Amazon's Mechanical Turk reportedly used people to transcribe some expense and benefits documents Amazon's touted SmartScan software was supposed to be doing but couldn't handle. To anyone who has dreaded the labyrinthine house of mirrors automated call systems have become, it might seem odd companies want to pretend to have a machine on the other end of the line rather than a human, but there are several factors at play.