2018 - when chatbots get more real

Tuesday January 30, 2018 , 4 min Read

With amazing developments being made each day, 2018 might just be the year when chatbots improve their scores on the Turing test.

“I am here to help humanity create the future.” – Sophia, world’s first robot to get citizenship.

Last year saw the adoption of chatbots almost across every sector and consumers making them a part of their lives. According to a recent report by Grand View Research, the global chatbot market is expected to reach $1.23 billion by 2025, a CAGR of 24.3 percent.

As Forrester Vice President, Julie Ask says, “While increasingly being used by businesses for customer service, the technology is still in its rough, early stages.”

According to a report by venture beat, 80 percent of all companies want to incorporate chatbots into their business models by the year 2020. And with amazing developments being made each day, 2018 might just be the year when chatbots improve their scores on the Turing test.

What makes 2018 so attractive for chatbots?

With unparalleled advancements being made in the field of Machine Learning and neural network processing, AI is no longer only for fortune 500 companies. Every company is now trying to experiment and improve with chatbots for greater customer satisfaction.

2018 is the year where every company has access to huge amounts of database of general FAQ’s and customer queries. You don’t have to be google or facebook to know the market trends. As a result different platforms are coming out with chatbots.

With huge platforms like Facebook Messenger pushing for chatbots, some amazing developments can be seen in the near future.

We have already witnessed the success of Google’s Allo, Facebook’s Messenger and Windows’ Cortana along with Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri and these have set the stage for the next wave of groundbreaking AI chatbot technologies.

How can we see chatbots becoming more real in 2018?

Chatbots are still in its infancy. It is the year when they make a jump from the innovators block and upgrade to the early majority.

Chatbots have improved exponentially from the first chatbot, ELIZA which passed the Turing test, to the latest versions of JARVIS. There are still many areas where there is room for improvement.

Increased acceptability:

According to The Chatbot Consumer Report, 71 percent of respondents said they didn't like using chatbots because they were unable to answer their queries efficiently. Hence chatbots need to improve upon this score.

Chatbots hold the power of natural language processing and with several studies showing positive results, 2018 will enable chatbots to converse more naturally with the customers.

Increased functionality:

From creating their own secret languages to spouting racist and sexist comments to simply not being very helpful, the emerging technology still has its very public shortcomings. Chatbots must broaden their scope and respond to a greater range of situations to overcome this.

According to a survey by Fiverr, assistance with customer service, online shopping, and collecting lead information are the top needs that developers must target.

Ensure regular updates

As Rob Harles, managing director at Accenture Interactive says, “A chatbot is like a baby — it needs to be nurtured and taught — you can't just set up a chatbot and let it go.”

Chatbots must be supported with regular updates to handle different kinds of situations.

Businesses must expect different kinds of queries.

As Jordi Torras, Inbenta CEO observes, four themes of strange chatbot questions:

Personal questions
Current affairs
Not-safe-for-work content
Seemingly random questions.

Chatbots in 2018 must be ready with answers for these.

Chatbots must be emotionally aware

It is the time to make this jump with amazing work being done in the field of AI. Chatbots must be made emotionally aware, this enables them to identify the customers’ mood and respond accordingly. With the coming of products like Alexa and google home products, advancements have been made in this direction and 2018 can the year for a big breakthrough.

So what do we expect in 2018?

Year 2017 saw reduced costs, great technological improvements, and exponential growth in terms of market coverage. Every company is now trying to bring chatbots at some level of the interaction with customers. 2018 can build on those and integrate other aspects.

With unprecedented developments in the field of AI and NLP being made every day, chatbots are bound to improve. Huge amounts of data and more efficient algorithms of data processing along with ever-improving Machine Learning, chatbots have a long journey to take. The “botsonality” is going to see some major overhauls.