What happened with Facebook Messenger's chat bots?

Chatbots were all the rage a year ago. USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham wonders where they went on #TalkingTech. LOS ANGELES -- At its annual conference for software developers in 2016, Facebook trumpeted chat bots as the next big thing in tech. A year later, users of Facebook Messenger are still waiting. Chat bots, those automated robots that respond to human queries, had an underwhelming debut.