Microsoft has its own 'Bing Assistant' bot in the works

Microsoft is building an assistant bot that, at least on the surface, looks quite similar to the just-announced Google Assistant bot. Called "Bing Concierge Bot," the coming productivity agent will be able to communicate over a variety of conversation platforms, including Skype, Messenger, SMS, WhatsApp and Telegram, according to a recent Microsoft job post seeking an engineer to join the team building the bot. Microsoft officials showed off previews of a number of single-purpose bots built using Microsoft's Bot Framework, which is currently available in preview form, at the company's Build conference in late March. Microsoft has begun populating its Bot Directory with a number of company-developed bots, like the Bing Image Bot, Caption Bot, Summarize bot and Bing Music Bot. Earlier this week, Kik Interactive announced that there's now an official Kik channel available on Microsoft's Bot Connector.