X.ai's meeting assistant bot is now available on Slack. Plans to bring the bot that automates meeting scheduling to communication platforms were first shared with VentureBeat last August following the closure of a $10 million funding round. The bot, which can be named Amy or Andrew, will be able to do the same thing on Slack as it does in email: Set up meetings for you using natural language understanding, stepping in to eliminate the back-and-forth haggling over when and where to meet. Amy and Andrew can schedule meetings with one or multiple people, record reminders, and deliver meeting summaries. X.ai started four years ago with an email client, since many meeting requests begin there, but expanded to Slack today because team members did not like switching to email just to schedule appointments with each other.

Due to the length and depth of this conversation, we have broken down the key takeaways into three blog posts. To get these posts straight to your inbox, sign up here. Let's get started with Part 2! If you missed it, read Part 1 here. Diane: As a company, we're super clear from the beginning: Amy and Andrew are AI. But ultimately, it's up to the customer in the initial hand-off to determine how to introduce Amy or Andrew into the email thread.

Until recently, Robyn Ewing was a writer in Hollywood, developing TV scripts and pitching pilots to film studios. Now she's applying her creative talents toward building the personality of a different type of character -- a virtual assistant, animated by artifical intelligence, that interacts with sick patients. Ewing works with engineers on the software program, called Sophie, which can be downloaded to a smartphone. The virtual nurse gently reminds users to check their medication, asks them how they are feeling or if they are in pain, and then sends the data to a real doctor. As tech behemoths and a wave of start-ups double down on virtual assistants that can chat with human beings, writing for AI is becoming a hot job in Silicon Valley.

Then you would want to hear from 7 founders that have built and scaled AI apps to success. Almost consistently, we heard them all say – don't get too consumed by the technology itself, but pay attention to the real human problem you're solving. Be human with your AI app. There's, of course, much more to the advice, so here are 7 founders in their own words, what it takes to develop a successful AI app. Research your user: If you don't know your user you don't know the tool's use.

These days, talking to a bot is commonplace. Think Siri, or your chatty banking app. But you wouldn't talk to your toaster like you talk to a friend -- unless your toaster had a great sense of humor. These days, talking to a bot is commonplace. Think Siri, or your chatty banking app.

These days, talking to a bot is commonplace. Think Siri, or your chatty banking app. But you wouldn't talk to your toaster like you talk to a friend -- unless your toaster had a great sense of humor. These days, talking to a bot is commonplace. Think Siri, or your chatty banking app.

In February, I took a job designing the personality of a chatbot called Kai. I ghostwrite the lines it says, and I have thought, while testing it, that talking to myself has rarely been so unpredictable. Kai, which was conceived by my employer, Kasisto, to help customers with online banking, works over text message, Slack, and especially Facebook Messenger, where more than thirty-four thousand other chatbots have joined it since April, when Facebook opened the platform to developers. Many of these bots possess no personality. The ones created by CNN and the Wall Street Journal, for instance, greet first-time users with "we," as if the whole newsroom were on the other side of the screen, and run keyword searches rather than engaging in conversation.

When email first became popular twenty-some odd years ago, the conventions for writing email didn't exist. A species of notes like the ones you pass to your BFF in class? I expect if I could dredge up those first 100 electronic messages I sent, I'd find some fairly stilted language--and definitely no emoticons. We were all just getting the hang of a new communications platform, and it took some time for us to collectively arrive at the rules of engagement (which invariably changed over time). A growing number of people use an AI assistant to schedule meetings or manage their finances or help find flights, but it's still a small set (we're working on that).

Nearly three years ago, the team behind X.ai began researching and developing a smart personal assistant to help us schedule meetings and make sense of our calendars. Today, the company's dream is being realized as it moves out of beta and launches a professional version of its A.I.-powered assistant to the world. For 39 per month, you can schedule an unlimited number of meetings each month, while having access to VIP contacts and personalized signatures. If you're not familiar with X.ai, its main products are two "assistants" named Amy and Andrew that you communicate with through email. There's no app that needs to be downloaded -- you just include a special email address in all of your correspondence, asking the virtual assistant to find time on your calendar to set up a meeting with whomever you want. The company has a free plan that is capped at five meetings per month.

We are fast moving from the app era to the era of the intelligent agent. By definition, these agents complete entire jobs by themselves, which means they must learn to understand us and our objectives. Therein lies the technical challenge--for humans often don't say what they mean. Worse, we believe that we're being clear when our communications are riddled with ambiguity. Amy's job is to schedule meetings.