Facebook christens bot bandwagon: Business bonanza or brand risk? ZDNet

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told developers that bots via its Messenger Platform is the future, but what remains to be seen is whether users will go for them as they work out early artificial intelligence issues. At the F8 developer conference, Facebook took the wraps off of its bots for Messenger effort, a series of application programming interfaces and tools for business bots. Google, Apple and every enterprise vendor will have some form of them. Simply put, chat bots are automated and conversational reps that can talk up products, get you to stores, be helpful and an assistant at times. Bots get you the goods without the legwork. Every tech player will be talking some form of bots.