AI chatbot apps to infiltrate businesses sooner than you think

Say you're interested in automation software for some customer service tasks. You visit a vendor's website, provide your contact information to request a live software demo and a sales assistant emails you to make sure you have the information you need. If you don't respond to that email, the sales assistant sends another the next day and the next -- this last one with an apology for bugging you and a smiley face. You feel a bit bad and finally answer this personable, persistent sales assistant, who, as it turns out, isn't a person at all. That scenario is already happening with virtual assistant platforms such as Conversica, and while it isn't pervasive just yet, within the next five years, there's a high probability that the "person" emailing you about a product or service you've shown interest in will be an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot thanks to leaps forward in technologies that understand customer intent and that can generate dialog to simulate natural conversations. In fact, artificial intelligence has come so far so fast in recent years, Gartner predicts it will be pervasive in all new products by 2020, with technologies including natural language capabilities, deep neural networks and conversational capabilities.