Now that AI program speak with us in natural language, turn our thoughts into illustrations, and embody our voices, a major conflict over their ethics is en route. And if you thought the content moderation fight was intense, just wait for this one. At stake is how chatbots address political issues, how AI illustrators portray the world, and whether some applications like voice emulators should even exist. Given the scale and power of this blossoming technology, the activists won't be subtle. They've had their practice fighting over human speech online, and they'll bring that experience to this war.

Now that AI programs speak with us in natural language, turn our thoughts into illustrations, and embody our voices, a major conflict over their ethics is en route. And if you thought the content moderation fight was intense, just wait for this one. At stake is how chatbots address political issues, how AI illustrators portray the world, and whether some applications like voice emulators should even exist. Given the scale and power of this blossoming technology, the activists won't be subtle. They've had their practice fighting over human speech online, and they'll bring that experience to this war.

Back when the world seemed bright and ambitious--another century, it might have been--I managed to convince myself, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, that what I really needed in my life was an assistant. This was December, the month when traditionally I can no longer outrun the clerical tasks that have stalked me since the middle of the year. I had weeks of crinkled receipts to expense: the year-end tax on negligence. I was halfway through the process of contesting the charge on a vaccine shot that my insurance company had refused to cover, and I had to transcribe hours of interviews before I could begin to write--the only use of my time which generates an income. As a moonless night wore on, filled with snacking and monsters, I futzed with the formulas in my sad expense spreadsheets and knew that these were hours of life I'd never get back.

Mike Chen was working on a health care start-up, he and his colleagues had one of those light bulb moments regarding digital assistance. "There should be something where you can just text it, and it just, like, does it for you," he said. Three years later, his remote personal-assistant company, Magic, has employees in the United States and the Philippines. Its promise is bold: to do "anything" for customers who send requests over text or email, Mr. Chen said, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Fin, another new virtual personal-assistant company, is the brainchild of Sam Lessin and Andrew Kortina, a founder of the popular mobile payment service Venmo.

"I have FOMO for the future", says Sam Lessin. That's why his startup Fin is working backwards from a far-off tech utopia. One day, computers with some human help will answer our every beck and call. Today, Lessin is teaming them up. Every day, Fin gets smarter.

"I have FOMO for the future", says Sam Lessin. That's why his startup Fin is working backwards from a far-off tech utopia. One day, computers with some human help will answer our every beck and call. Today, Lessin is teaming them up. Every day, Fin gets smarter.

It has been four months since we launched the Kik Bot Shop and Facebook opened its bot platform for Messenger. It's been about the same time since the hype around bots was at its peak, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicting that bots would be as big as apps. Since then, the hype has cooled, with some people now wondering why bots suck and politely asking not to be exposed to them. At Kik, we remain bullish on bots, but we've noticed the same thing everyone else has: so far, there has been no killer bot. This is not yet the world that the early hype promised.