Conversable, maker of automated bots for popular food chains such as McDonald's, TGI Friday's, Pizza Hut, Dunkin' Donuts, and Denny's, was acquired today by LivePerson. Other companies using Conversable have been as varied as Sam's Club, Whole Foods, and government contractor Booz Allen. A platform to help customers better train the machine learning they use was introduced in March 2017. The company was founded in the 1990s to connect customer service agents at large companies with customers for live conversations, but it began to branch out in recent years with the rise of third-party platforms for popular messaging apps, starting in 2016 with an integration for Facebook Messenger. Beyond web chat, LivePerson offers chat management system integrations for WhatsApp, Google RCS, and Apple Business Chat.

Move over, Sam Malone: Flanagan, the AI mixologist is here to serve up cocktails. Artificial intelligence-solutions company Hypergiant helped develop a new AI bartender/mixologist program for TGI Friday's called Flanagan (named for Tom Cruise's character in the 1988 film Cocktail). Flanagan, which interacts with both TGI Friday's smartphone app and its loyalty accounts, makes drink recommendations based on a customer's food choices or preferences. It can also create an off-menu personalized cocktail based on a flavor profile, a customer's mood or their previous eating and drinking habits. According to Ben Lamm, the CEO of Hypergiant, Flanagan is particularly noteworthy in that it offers an AI solution for two of TGI Friday's core business problems: how to get more people inside the restaurant, and how to learn more about them.

Fewer technologies have garnered more attention over the past year than chatbots, those virtual assistants that mimic human speech while facilitating tasks on behalf of humans, typically via a conversational messaging interface. At a time when software is driving unprecedented levels of automation, companies are using chatbots to help customers order anything from food to office supplies to additional computing capacity. Chatbots are a big reason why corporate adoption of cognitive systems and AI will drive worldwide revenues from nearly $8 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020, according to IDC. But what exactly makes a great chatbot? Perhaps more importantly given enterprises' investments in such tools, what makes a bad one?

For their Secret Empire event, Marvel Comics announces interactive social media chatbots that lets fans "talk" back-and-forth with their favorite heroes. Marvel Comics' Chatbot Allows Fans to Converse with some of their Favorite Marvel Super Heroes and Become Part of the Story Marvel's chatbot offers quizzes, puzzles, first-looks, exclusive content, and helps you find your local comic shop through Facebook Messenger and Twitter DM New York, NY--April 20, 2017-- Today, Marvel is excited to announce, an all-new way to interact directly with the Marvel Universe, with Marvel's first chatbot. Timed with the release of Marvel Comics' SECRET EMPIRE fans will have the ability to directly chat with some of their favorite Marvel Super Heroes and be a part of the Marvel Universe through Facebook Messenger and Twitter DM. Powered by Conversable, this new chatbot experience presents a bold and exciting new way for fans to interact with some of Marvel's most popular heroes who are directly in the throes of Marvel Comics' SECRET EMPIRE! At launch, in support of Marvel Comics' SECRET EMPIRE event, the Marvel chatbot will allow fans the ability to converse with everyone's favorite neighborhood wall-crawler, Spider-Man!

TGI Friday's may have a reputation as a casual restaurant and watering hole, but its messaging to customers was hardly conversational. The well-known chain sent out regular blasts through traditional broad-reach media and, more recently, social media, yet it increasingly wanted to re-create the banter that happens organically when regulars belly up to the bar. In lieu of hiring a battalion of customer service "bar keeps," TGI Fridays recruited an enterprise conversation platform infused with a shot of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to personalize its messaging and overall customer experience. Now, patrons can chat up the AI for happy hour suggestions and appetizer specials, engage in small talk using emojis, make reservations, and order takeout via social media channels and through Amazon Alexa. "We thought about how technology could help us create that one-on-one personalized messaging outside of the bar without having to hire 1,000 people to respond to individual guests," says Sherif Mityas, vice president of strategy and brand initiatives, as well as acting CIO, at TGI Fridays.

Conversable is'conversational intelligence' platform to help non-programmers impart human knowledge into conversation robots. Conversable is used by hockey fans with Budweiser Red Lights goal-synced products to access light-device-smartphone setup tutorials, access troubleshooting advice and receive further support from live customer service reps through Facebook Messenger. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has had something of a makeover and renaissance in recent times. We have stopped using the term to describe fantasy Sci-Fi robots and started to talk about real software robots that we often call'bots' that we build to serve our needs automatically. Botification is now a thing.

Booz Allen Hamilton and Conversable are teaming up to tackle what could be government's next big move to improve customer service -- chatbots. Booz Allen announced Monday that the two companies have a "joint strategic focus to advance, test and deliver world-class automated interactive messaging, tools, services and experiences that fundamentally enhance and transform customer care in all channels." "The federal government is uniquely positioned and motivated to seize the opportunity and deliver on the promise for self-service," Michael Isman, vice president in Booz Allen's Strategic Innovation Group, told FedScoop. The companies plan to leverage advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing to advance the capabilities of chatbots -- automated software programs developed to converse with people, usually via messaging. "The idea is -- we believe that the gains [in artificial intelligence, machine learning, automated next-gen analytics, crowdsourcing] can be most readily realized through the deployment of chatbots," Isman said, "to improve client, customer and stakeholder access, listening, responsiveness, [and] service delivery."

During the next five years, messaging will become the preferred path for customer and stakeholder interaction, ultimately displacing call centers and replacing or augmenting mobile apps. For commercial brands and government programs looking to extend and expand their customer base, they must satisfy this customer demand for next-gen messaging channels and rapid response. Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) and Conversable announced today a joint strategic focus to advance, test, and deliver world-class automated interactive messaging, tools, services, and experiences that fundamentally enhance and transform customer care in all channels. The days of commercial brands and federal programs spending millions of dollars and many years to launch an essentially single-use mobile application are coming to an end. Leading brands and programs will increasingly look to bots and automation in messaging to better analyze and understand customer requests, and reach out to new consumers who are rapidly becoming more adept and comfortable with executing commerce through more robust, tailored, responsive and secure messaging platforms.