Is your next intern a chatbot? - San Francisco Business Times

Everyday virtual assistants – like Siri, or Google Now's voice feature – are well-trained to respond to your queries about weather, directions and other basic information. Now a new crop of artificial intelligence assistants with names like Tara and Amy are jockeying for a job at your company. San Francisco-based TARA, created by Iba Masood and Syed Ahmad as part of Y Combinator, is a chatbot designed to help startups and small businesses offload the work of sourcing, contacting and hiring freelancers to build and redesign websites and applications. "Our customers do not have to be technical," adds Masood, noting that the assistant has helped non-technical business owners to add functionality like apps of payments to their existing products. "Through simple commands such as'build me a VR app for Android,' TARA assigns the contractor and helps build the entire platform."