Bots aren’t just here to chat. They might kill the app.

The Economist touts bots as the “invisible app.” You won’t have to download a buggy app and wait for it to boot up just to grab a few shopping deals. Simply open up any messaging app, type what you need, and press send. Instead of spending money on developing a new app, companies may choose to work with existing APIs on the internet to create a chatbot that can serve customer needs.

I’ve got a chatbot in my pocket

Apps are the best way to reach users on their mobile devices. Nonetheless, developers are facing strong competition in the app stores. Also, users may be suffering from app fatigue. Apps eat up storage space – and sometimes battery life too.

Chatbots can remove the hassle of scrolling through multiple apps or sites to find the information and perform tasks that you want via a seamless, conversational interface.

Line’s weather bot in Singapore

Line is trying to cash in. It launched on June 23, 2011, then released the weather bot the same year. In 2012, Line started providing “official accounts” that allow external corporations to deliver information and exchange messages.

Now, Line’s Messaging API, with which corporations can develop bot-based Line accounts, was released after Line Developer Day 2016. Expect to see bots built around ecommerce and gaming.

Line eventually aims to become a “smart portal” through which users can find anything they want, anytime. Chatbots turn Line into a smart portal by facilitating real-time and relevant communication between users and services.

As such, it’s important for the conversation to be natural and casual. It is extremely important for bots to appropriately reply to casual language and provide information and content that are relevant to the user,” added Tokuhiro Matsuno, Line’s engineer, drawing lessons from its translation and weather bots.

Line’s Korean translation bot tested by our team.

Such bots will allow people to message businesses like a friend too. “It could be efficient to have the initial response handled by a bot, and then have real people provide any necessary individual support thereafter,” explained Shohei Niki, Line Corporation’s Planner.

Line is still working to improve a user’s affinity with a chatbot. “We’re looking at what content messages should contain and how messages should be presented,” said Shohei Niki. Stickers can also be sent, and Line is working on a larger variety of messages that can be sent, such as buttons, carousels, and confirmations.

Image Credit: Line

Build your own bot

Yuren, a software engineer at Vectr Labs, has built a couple of prototype bots – a vacation request log on Slack, and a travel expense calculator on Line, after the release of the API.

“The bot is a new weapon for developers,” Yuren says. “Chatbots can provide a safe and personal environment for users to freely share information.”

Image credit: Yuren

He started developing the travel expense chatbot to understand more about the Line’s Messaging API and to help him remember how much he has spent in a foreign country. “All information sent to the chatbot will be filled in a Google spreadsheet,” he says. The bot’s features include recording expenses in different currencies, transfers (e.g. cash put into a Suica card whilst in Tokyo), and a summary of expenses in the desired currency.

Yuren developed the bot within a day with Line’s Messaging API. He is also working on a bot that allows users to open a shop on a Facebook fan page, and sell over Facebook Messenger.

Line thinks that ecommerce bots will take off too. “Everything from showcasing products to purchases can be completed as if you are chatting with a real person,” said Shohei Niki. The firm is also offering a beacon solution that enables brick-and-mortar stores to send users coupons and product information during visits via the Line app.

Means to an end

Even as bots are in their infancy, we can make use of them for quick searches and translations. Facebook Messenger has a few chatbots, one of which provides news and stock updates from the Wall Street Journal. On top of completing these basic tasks on command, bots are very useful for firms which are expanding their business, such as in aggregating and predicting food customer orders.

Chatbots are merely the start to bigger things for Line. Line eventually hopes to build a better user interface that allows users to complete more tasks via chatbots that are synced with external websites. This is because some tasks, like booking a flight, may not be best served in a conversation. Nonetheless, believers of deep learning think that AI will soon become smarter and offer more convincing speech patterns.

“I think that if there is one bot that could do everything or a bot that could guide you to other bots so that everything can be completed on a messenger via bots, that would be really close to the ultimate bot,” said Shohei Niki.

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