Chatbots are all the business buzz – and for good reason.

They give customers of any-size business critical answers to pressing questions quickly.

They can:

Boost your average order value.
Accelerate the buyers’ journey.
Reduce your customer service costs.

complete article

Those wanting a firmer grip on chatbots, then, may have to explore more underhand techniques, such as the one discovered by two computer-science researchers at Harvard University. They’ve demonstrated how chatbots can be tactically controlled by deploying something as simple as a carefully written string of text. This “strategic text sequence” looks like a nonsensical … Continue reading ""The Chatbot Optimisation Game: Can We Trust AI Web Searches?""

Make anywhere from $48 to $995 per day by pasting one line of code on your website to deploy an A.I. chatbot that sucks in free traffic and converts leads into sales… Without writing a single line of code, or needing any techie skills whatsoever! Say goodbye to: • Hiring an expensive programmer to code […]

Marketing technology has evolved so fast that before you know it, chatbots have also gone through a radical make-over in their algorithm and appearance. You may recall that for chatbots of old, you need to ‘preset’ it with a list of predefined questions and the expected corresponding responses/answers, which takes time as well as work […]

As the AI chatbot's advanced conversational capabilities continue to generate buzz, here are detailed answers to your most-asked questions.

Aim/Purpose: This mixed-methods study aims to examine factors influencing academicians’ intentions to continue using AI-based chatbots by integrating the Task-Technology Fit (TTF) model and social network characteristics. Background: AI-powered chatbots are gaining popularity across industries, including academia. However, empirical research on academicians’ adoption behavior is limited. This study proposes an integrated model incorporating TTF factors and social network characteristics like density, homophily, and connectedness to understand academics’ continuance intentions. Methodology: A qualitative study involving 31 interviews of academics from India examined attitudes and the potential role of social network characteristics like density, homophily, and connectedness in adoption. Results showed positive sentiment towards chatbots and themes on how peer groups accelerate diffusion. In the second phase, a survey of 448 faculty members from prominent Indian universities was conducted to test the proposed research model. Contribution: The study proposes and validates an integrated model of TTF and social network factors that influence academics’ continued usage intentions toward AI chatbots. It highlights the nuanced role of peer networks in shaping adoption. Findings: Task and technology characteristics positively affected academics’ intentions to continue AI chatbot usage. Among network factors, density showed the strongest effect on TTF and perceived usefulness, while homophily and connectedness had partial effects. The study provides insights into designing appropriate AI tools for the academic context. Recommendations for Practitioners: AI chatbot designers should focus on aligning features to academics’ task needs and preferences. Compatibility with academic work culture is critical. Given peer network influences, training and demonstrations to user groups can enhance adoption. Platforms should have capabilities for collaborative use. Targeted messaging customized to disciplines can resonate better with academic subgroups. Multidisciplinary influencers should be engaged. Concerns like plagiarism risks, privacy, and job impacts should be transparently addressed. Recommendation for Researchers: More studies are needed across academic subfields to understand nuanced requirements and barriers. Further studies are recommended to investigate differences across disciplines and demographics, relative effects of specific network factors like size, proximity, and frequency of interaction, the role of academic leadership and institutional policies in enabling chatbot adoption, and how AI training biases impact usefulness perceptions and ethical issues. Impact on Society: Increased productivity in academia through the appropriate and ethical use of AI can enhance quality, access, and equity in education. AI can assist in mundane tasks, freeing academics’ time for higher-order objectives like critical thinking development. Responsible AI design and policies considering socio-cultural aspects will benefit sustainable growth. With careful implementation, it can make positive impacts on student engagement, learning support, and research efficiency. Future Research: Conduct longitudinal studies to examine the long-term impacts of AI chatbot usage in academia. Track usage behaviors over time as familiarity develops. Investigate differences across academic disciplines and roles. Requirements may vary for humanities versus STEM faculty or undergraduate versus graduate students. Assess user trust in AI and how it evolves with repeated usage, and examine trust-building strategies. Develop frameworks to assess pedagogical effectiveness and ethical risks of conversational agents in academic contexts.

Aim/Purpose: One of the most fascinating developments in computer user interfaces in recent years is the rise of “chatbots”. Yet extent information system (IS) curriculum lacks teaching resources on chatbots programming.. Background: To better prepare students for this new technological development and to enhance the IS curriculum, we introduce a project that teaches students how to program simple chatbots, including a transactional chatbot and a conversational chatbot. Methodology: We demonstrated a project that teaches students how to program two types of simple chatbots: a transactional chatbot and a conversational chatbot. We also conducted a survey to examine students’ perceptions on their learning experience. Findings: Our survey on students’ perception of the project finds that learning chatbots is deemed very useful because chatbot programming projects have enabled the students to understand the subject better. We also found that social influence has positively motivated the students to learn chatbot programming. Though most of the students have no prior experiences programming chatbots, their self-efficacy towards chatbot programming remained high after working through the programming project. Despite the difficult tasks, over 71% of respondents agree to various degrees that chatbot programming is fun. Though most students agree that chatbot programming is not easy to learn, more than 70% of respondents indicated that they will use or learn chatbots in the near future. The overwhelmingly positive responses are impressive given that this is the first time for the students to program and learn chatbots. Recommendations for Practitioners: In this article, we introduced a step by step project on teaching chatbot programming in an information systems class. Following the project instructions, students can get their first intelligent chatbots up and running in a few hours using Slack. This article describes the project in detail as well as students’ perceptions. Recommendations for Researchers: We used UTAUT model to measure students’ perception of the projects. This study could be of value to researchers studying students’ technology learning and adoption behaviors. Impact on Society: To our best knowledge, pedagogical resources that teach IS students how to program chatbots, especially the introductory level materials, are limited. We hope this teaching case could be of value for IS educators when introducing IS students to the wonderful field of chatbot programming. Future Research: For future work, we plan to expand the teaching resources to cover more advanced chatbot programming projects, such as on how to make chatbot more human-like.

Aim/Purpose: This research investigated the determinant factors influencing the adoption intentions of Chatsicum, a Knowledge-Based Chatbot (KBC) aimed at enhancing the species literacy of biodiversity students. Background: This research was conducted to bridge the gap between technology, education, and biodiversity conservation. Innovative solutions are needed to empower individuals with knowledge, particularly species knowledge, in preserving the natural world. Methodology: The study employed a quantitative approach using the Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) and sampled 145 university students as respondents. The research model combined the Task-Technology Fit (TTF) framework with elements from the Diffusion of Innovation (DOI), including relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, and observability. Also, the model introduced perceived trust as an independent variable. The primary dependent variable under examination was the intention to use the KBC. Contribution: The findings of this research contribute to a deeper understanding of the critical factors affecting the adoption of the KBC in biodiversity education and outreach, as studies in this context are limited. This study provides valuable insights for developers, educators, and policymakers interested in promoting species literacy and leveraging innovative technologies by analyzing the interplay of TTF and DOI constructs alongside perceived trust. Ultimately, this research aims to foster more effective and accessible biodiversity education strategies. Findings: TTF influenced all DOI variables, such as relative advantage, compatibility, observability, and trust positively and complexity negatively. In conclusion, TTF strongly affected usage intention indirectly. However, relative advantage, complexity, and observability insignificantly influenced the intention to use. Meanwhile, compatibility and trust strongly affected the use intention. Recommendations for Practitioners: Developers should prioritize building and maintaining chatbots that are aligned with the tasks, needs, and goals of the target users, as well as establishing trust through the assurance of information accuracy. Educators could develop tailored educational interventions that resonate with the values and preferences of diverse learners and are aligned closely with students’ learning needs, preferences, and curriculum while ensuring seamless integration with the existing educational context. Conservation organizations and policymakers could also utilize the findings of this study to enhance their outreach strategies, as the KBC is intended for students and biodiversity laypeople. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers should explore the nuances of relationships between TTF and DOI, as well as trust, and consider the potential influence of mediating and moderating variables to advance the field of technology adoption in educational contexts. Researchers could also explore why relative advantage, complexity, and observability did not significantly impact the usage intention and whether specific user segments or contextual factors influence these relationships. Impact on Society: This research has significant societal impacts by improving species literacy, advancing technology in education, and promoting conservation efforts. Species knowledge could raise awareness regarding biodiversity and the importance of conservation, thereby leading to more informed and responsible citizens. Future Research: Future works should address the challenges and opportunities presented by KBCs in the context of species literacy enhancement, for example, interventions or experiments to influence the non-significant factors. Furthermore, longitudinal studies should investigate whether user behavior evolves. Ultimately, examining the correlation between species literacy, specifically when augmented by chatbots, and tangible conservation practices is an imperative domain in the future. It may entail evaluating the extent to which enhanced knowledge leads to concrete measures promoting biodiversity preservation.

Around 40 mobile chatbot robots offering support in 25 different languages are being prepared for the IDEAS exhibition

A friend is investigating the use of generative AI in his classes. I asked two different popular chatbots to write MATLAB programs for a mathematically nontrivial problem. Both chatbots understood my query and both wrote plausible MATLAB programs, but one of the programs was not correct. My recommendation for coursework: carefully read and test programs produced by generative AI and repair any incorrect ones.... read more >>

Meta has been designing prototypes for chatbots that can have humanlike discussions with its users, as the company attempts to boost its engagement with its social media platforms, according to the report, citing people with knowledge of the plans.

It has been estimated that by 2024, consumer retail spend via chatbots worldwide will reach $142 billion?up from $2.8 billion in 2019

Chatbots are software applications designed to provide a conversational speech based interface to Web sites and services. Brian will be able to answer questions on the Workshop and this year's Workshop location, Bath. [2006-05-12]

David Burden, Managing Director, DADENLIMITED and Marieke Guy, UKOLN will consider questions like: Can chatbots make sites more accessible or do they break fundamental usability rules? Do users like them, or find them irritating or even patronising? Are they the next best thing or a 5 minute wonder? Can they really benefit the education sector? Can a chatbot ever really learn?

Host Kanchan Shringi speaks with Venky Naganathan,Sr. Director of Engineering at Conga specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots about the Conversational UI paradigm for Enterprise Apps as well as the enablers and business use cases suited...

Chabot development comes with a unique set of requirements and considerations that may prove challenging to those making their first excursion into this new breed of services. This podcast features a panel of developers who have been there, done that, and are willing to talk about it.

The previous podcast featured a discussion of chatbot development with a panel of developers who were part of a program that provided early access to the Oracle Intelligent Bots platform available within the Mobile Cloud Service. In this podcast we continue the discussion of chatbot development with an entirely new panel of developers who also had the opportunity to work with that same Intelligent Bots beta release.

• Oracle ACE Director Mia Urman is Chief Executive Officer of AuraPlayer Limited. She’s based in Brookline, Massachusetts.
• Peter Crew is Director at SDS Group, and Chief Technical Officer with MagiaCX Solutions, in Perth, Australia
• And Christoph Ruepprich is Infrastructure Senior Principal with Accenture Enkitec Group. He’s based in Dallas, TX

In this program Mia, Peter, and Christoph compare notes on the particular challenges that defined their chatbot development experiences, and discuss what they did to meet those challenges.

Chatbots. You’ve heard of them. You’ve read about them. You may even be involved in developing them. By a wide margin, one of the most popular Oracle Developer podcasts in the last several months was Chatbot Development, First Steps and Lessons Learned - Part 1 which was published back in September of 2017. So it’s safe to say that chatbots remain a hot topic. So you may be surprised to learn that the conversation you are about to hear doesn’t really focus on chatbots, at least, not directly. Instead, the panel discusses the AI work they're currently involved in, the AI challenges they face, and other issues relevant to developing AI solutions.

View the complete show notes.

Already enjoying wide adoption, digital assistants are destined to become even more prevalent.  As the use of digital assistants expands, so do the opportunities for developers with the necessary skills. In this program you’ll meet three people among the vanguard of those developing digital assistants. Oracle ACE Director Mia Urman, Founder and CEO of AuraPlayer, was deeply involved in the development of KBot, the chatbot developed to respond to questions from attendees at the 2019 ODTUG KScope event in Seattle.  David Callaghan, Senior Developer at Hermes, a UK-based parcel delivery company, led the development team behind Holly, the AI entity that has revolutionized customer service at Hermes. Grant Ronald, Director of Product Management within Oracle's Digital Assistant development team, had an active role in Holly’s creation. 

Listen to learn about what goes into the design and development of a chatbot, the challenges encountered along the way, and how to celebrate a chatbot's birthday.

Companies are beginning to apply traditional speech analytics to their automated conversations.

La competencia en el campo de la IA es feroz, con Google y Microsoft a la cabeza en funciones de productividad y Apple entrando en el mercado con iPhones con capacidad de IA Leer

Humans aren’t quite ready for a chatbot takeover, according to a new study

A quirk in the Unicode standard harbors an ideal steganographic code channel.

A chatbot that can counter each person’s conspiratorial claim of choice with troves of information might be much more effective, the researchers thought.

Proptech refers to the use of technology and software to assist the real estate market with its needs.

The Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is excited to unveil the latest edition to their online services at dmv.de.gov, Della the Chatbot. Della began assisting customers on the website in early June 2024. DMV partnered with Google Cloud and SID Global Solutions Digital in the development of the AI-powered chatbot that will provide customers […]

Many people enjoy the experience of using AIs like ChatGPT or voice assistants like Alexa to find out information, but it turns out doing so makes it less likely you will spot inaccurate information

To address the problem of AIs generating inaccurate information, a team of ethicists says there should be legal obligations for companies to reduce the risk of errors, but there are doubts about whether it would work

AI chatbots from Google and Microsoft sometimes parrot disinformation when answering questions about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – but their performance depends on language and changes over time

The foundation set up in her memory said it would cause "further heartache to everyone who knew and loved Molly".

Patients should be cautious when relying solely on AI-powered search engines and chatbots for drug information, warn researchers in the journal iBMJ Quality (and) Safety.

Social network X has so far limited its AI chatbot Grok (built by Elon Musk’s other company xAI) to its premium, paying users. However, the platform is seemingly preparing to open up the chatbot to free users. Over the weekend, several app researchers and users posted about a free version of Grok being made available […]

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Bengaluru start-up’s automated platform detects and fixes machine learning gone wrong

Yoga Insurance Services, sister company of OneCall, has signed up as the first client.

Marketing scientist Kevin Gray asks Dr. Anna Farzindar of the University of Southern California about chatbots and the ways they are used.

This video shows you how to create IBM Watson Workspace chatbots, using Open Source resources and the Watson Workspace framework and SDK, which help you develop applications faster and with less code.

Get the latest cybersecurity news, opinion and advice.

In this week's UK Tech Weekly Podcast host Matt Egan is joined by online editor at Techworld.com Scott Carey to discuss all of the news coming out of Microsoft's Build 2016 developer conference, before being joined by producer Chris to talk about the company's genocidal AI chatbot Tay's public meltdown (13:00). Then, acting editor at Macworld.co.uk David Price jumps in to discuss the apparent resolution to the Apple vs FBI fight (29:00).  

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Producer Chris dives in this week to discuss the HTC 10 release, and why it's difficult to get excited about good mobile phones. Then Techworld.com editor Charlotte Jee chats Facebook chatbots and other F8 news (12:30). Finally, editor at Digitalartsonline.co.uk Neil Bennett jumps in to discuss the new Amazon e-reader (31:00) Kindle Oasis and why everyone is kicking off about the price.  

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In 1966, the Eliza program couldn’t say much—but it was enough

The bot learned language from people on Twitter—but it also learned values

You can now debunk thousands of coronavirus-related hoaxes with a few texts on WhatsApp . Poynter Institute, a non-profit organization that supports journalism, today launched a bot on the Facebook -owned service that will allow people across the globe to debunk over 4,000 hoaxes surrounding the pandemic such as whether the infectious disease originated in […]

You can now debunk thousands of coronavirus-related hoaxes with a few texts on WhatsApp . Poynter Institute, a non-profit organization that supports journalism, today launched a bot on the Facebook -owned service that will allow people across the globe to debunk over 4,000 hoaxes surrounding the pandemic such as whether the infectious disease originated in […]

The International Fact-Checkers Network (IFCN) said it will launch a bot on the popular messaging service WhatsApp that allows users to query terms like 'masks' or 'coronavirus symptoms.'