Nikki Gilliland says, “According to recent reports, 70% of Facebook Messenger chatbots are failing to fulfil user requests. Consequently, the social network is set to scale back its AI efforts, instead focusing on a more simplistic system to ensure success.

But will this spell the end of the current chatbot trend? And what does it mean for brands that have already invested?

Here’s a bit more on the story, as well as few examples of the latest brand bots to appear.

What went wrong?

A number of businesses jumped on board the chatbot bandwagon as soon as the system was announced last year. In July, Facebook reported that there were 11,000 chatbots live on Messenger, with this figure expanding to a whopping 30,000 by September 2016.

The idea was great in theory. Essentially, a chatbot would be able replace human interaction, with bots replying to customer service queries in ‘conversation’ with users online. However, with chatbots failing to correctly respond to the majority of queries, it soon became clear that the technology was not yet sophisticated enough to have anything resembling a genuine conversation”.

Facebook scales back on chatbots: What does it mean for brands?

EConsultancy

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