Facebook Messenger boss says chatbots got 'really overhyped,' announces new native payment feature

Facebook's chatbot platform had too much hype. That's what David Marcus, head of Facebook Messenger, said on stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. Facebook first released its chatbot platform in April, enabling developers to build robots that use artificial intelligence and natural language processing to let people talk with businesses just like they do with friends and family on Messenger. At the April launch, Facebook showed how a commerce company like 1-800-FLOWERS could use chatbots to help people order flowers and automate communication with customers, for example. But after TechCrunch reporter Josh Constine noted today that the product was "half-baked" when it first launched and asked what was missing, Marcus said that expectations for chatbots were a bit overdone.