Microsoft thinks it's found the next big thing after the iPhone

In this week's Bloomberg Businessweek cover story, Microsoft revealed its plans to go all in on chatbots, or programs powered by artificial intelligence that can help you do mundane tasks like book a flight or schedule your finances. The company will give more demos of its experiments with chatbots starting Wednesday during its annual Build developer's conference in San Francisco. Chatbots are a growing trend in the tech world. Amazon's Echo speaker has a built-in digital assistant called Alexa that you can talk to and order items online, get traffic and weather alerts, or control your music. Facebook Messenger has a chatbot called M that can do just about anything for you, even prank your friends.