While big firms are rolling out large numbers of chatbots, it is smaller businesses that can use them to save the most time per head or per dollar, freeing up workers and revenue to focus on the company's key tasks. Massive airlines, food brands, health service providers among others are all rolling out chatbots to make their customer service and business proposition more streamlined and efficient. While a few noteable examples see them making a big difference, such as Unilever replacing its phone and email HR services globally with a chatbot, for many it just another box ticked on the road to efficiency or a branding experiment. For a startup, however, smaller business or fast-growing midsized firm, a chatbot can become a highly valuable and key part of the team. For startups, often with minimal resources, the chatbot is another cloud service that can be deployed for free or at low cost. It can act in the role of receptionist, sales advisor, customer support or booking tool.

Transport for London has become the latest organisation to embrace the chatbot revolution with the launch of its very own TravelBot to field customer service queries sent via social media. The AI powered social media tool will free up staff to focus on other matters by engaging in timetabling conversations with prospective travellers on Facebook Messenger, where it will offer service updates, relay bus departure and arrival times, and provide travel maps. For the service to work passengers must share their location or tap in a unique bus stop identifier for TravelBot to do its job, although if it finds itself flummoxed by a particularly esoteric question it can raise the conversation for the attention of a human customer service agent. Shashi Verma, TfL's director of customer experience, said: "Millions of people already use our Journey Planner and social media channels to help them get around London, and we are constantly seeking new ways to make the process even easier. This TravelBot will make it simpler for people using Messenger to get the information they need as they move around the city.

That's a question I've been asked a lot lately and one that I'm hoping to get more answers to by attending the second edition of Chatbot Summit in Berlin at the end of the month. Since bot mania took over the tech world nearly a year and a half ago, not a single month has gone by without significant news coming from startups and the usual suspects (i.e. The space has been hyperactive since the beginning, and it doesn't show any sign of slowing down. That said, a lot of brand managers and chief digital officers are still new to the bot world, so I thought it would be handy to go back in time in order to understand where the bot ecosystem stands today. As of mid-2016, more than 11,000 Facebook Messenger bots and 20,000 Kik bots had been launched.

Advancements in artificial intelligence, coupled with the proliferation of messaging apps, are fueling the development of chatbots -- software programs that use messaging as the interface through which to carry out any number of tasks, from scheduling a meeting, to reporting weather, to helping users buy a pair of shoes. Foreseeing immense potential, businesses are starting to invest heavily in the burgeoning bot economy. A number of brands and publishers have already deployed bots on messaging and collaboration channels, including HP, 1-800-Flowers, and CNN. While the bot revolution is still in the early phase, many believe 2016 will be the year these conversational interactions take off. In a new report from BI Intelligence, we explore the growing and disruptive bot landscape by investigating what bots are, how businesses are leveraging them, and where they will have the biggest impact.

Chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the Internet. Among Facebook's F8 announcements, there was one about chatbots on messenger. Simply put: as a part of the newly announced messenger platform, Facebook has made it easy to integrate a chatbot as a part of the business page service suite. A user with a question can ask it freely (not in a code format) over Facebook's messenger and get an answer in natural language. What are the uses for chatbots?

Chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the Internet. Among Facebook's F8 announcements, there was one about chatbots on messenger. Simply put: as a part of the newly announced messenger platform, Facebook has made it easy to integrate a chatbot as a part of the business page service suite. A user with a question can ask it freely (not in a code format) over Facebook's messenger and get an answer in natural language. All the current UX/UI design efforts are there to guide us and reduce confusion where possible: Get the categories on your fashion site in a clear and intuitive manner so that users can easily find what they are looking for.

Oracle CTO Larry Ellison ordered himself some new business cards on stage at the company's OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Sunday, just by having a conversation. As part of his keynote address to attendees, Ellison took the time to show off a new set of tools for creating intelligent chatbots that integrate with Oracle's software. It's aimed at making it easier for businesses to build bots that let users connect with their enterprise software, and help businesses connect with consumers. Chatbots are a hot topic in the tech industry, with companies like Facebook, Microsoft and Slack all building tools that companies can use to create intelligent, automated conversation partners. Their growing popularity comes down to a few factors, including the proliferation of smartphones, fast internet connections and messaging apps.

The Facebook Messenger platform boasts thousands of bots. Remember when AI-driven chatbots promised to be THE NEXT BIG THING? Yes, that was last week. And, yes, the hype has already subsided into an impotent whimper. At least, that's what new developer data from VisionMobile reveals.

Advancements in artificial intelligence, coupled with the proliferation of messaging apps, are fueling the development of chatbots -- software programs that use messaging as the interface through which to carry out any number of tasks, from scheduling a meeting, to reporting weather, to helping users buy a pair of shoes. Foreseeing immense potential, businesses are starting to invest heavily in the burgeoning bot economy. A number of brands and publishers have already deployed bots on messaging and collaboration channels, including HP, 1-800-Flowers, and CNN. While the bot revolution is still in the early phase, many believe 2016 will be the year these conversational interactions take off. In a new report from BI Intelligence, we explore the growing and disruptive bot landscape by investigating what bots are, how businesses are leveraging them, and where they will have the biggest impact.

The idea of automated customer service is nothing new – from speech recognition technology on dreaded call center phone lines, to Apple's groundbreaking Siri personal assistant system, AI has been in our lives and in our pockets for a while now. Yet, young as 2016 still is, it's already defined itself as the year of the Chatbot – from Microsoft's experimental and indeed controversial (more on that later) attempt to engage millennials with the creation of'Tay', a chatbot designed to imitate a teenage girl, in March, to April's recent inundation of announcements from companies eager to trial Chatbots, this year could be the year Chatbots go mainstream. But in a world where the search for authenticity seems increasingly futile and more and more of our meaningful interactions take place via a screen, will the public really welcome Bots? Are they even ready for widespread release? And how are businesses going to capitalize on them? Put simply, a Bot is a piece of software which performs automated tasks and simple, time-consuming or repetitive errands, and this is exactly what a ChatBot does – except (you guessed it), it simulates human interaction.