While chatbots aren’t new, they’ve managed to occupy a prominent place in the modern technology environment. In 2016, the chatbot boom was similar to the app boom of several years ago. And some recent chatbots are even on the path to becoming new apps. Nowadays, chatbots are everywhere, from simple conversational bots in banking apps to artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots in educational platforms that help people learn foreign languages.
Recently, we had a conversation about chatbot development here at RubyGarage. Among the main ideas we highlighted are the difference between simple conversational and artificial intelligence chatbots and the reasons why chatbots can be more beneficial for your business than apps. We also talked about how to create a chatbot for your business – options include finding a ready solution, using platforms for developing a chatbot, or building a custom chatbot. And of course we addressed the most exciting question for all business owners: What is the cost for creating a chatbot?
In this article we’ll take a look at top 5 AI chatbots currently available on the market, and will consider what impact they’ve had on businesses they were developed for.
Duolingo
Duolingo, an educational platform for learning foreign languages, is one of the most outstanding resources of its type. In 2011, the year when Duolingo was founded, it was available only on the web, but now it also runs on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. If you’re learning a language online, you often don’t have an interlocutor. That’s why this October Duolingo launched AI-powered chatbots for their iOS app that can help you improve your language conversational skills.
Duolingo’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are the first major change for the company’s app since it was launched. These chatbots are currently available in Spanish, French, and German, but the company isn’t going to stop here. They promise to add more languages soon, as well as to add these chatbots to their apps for iPad and other platforms. Perhaps you’re wondering: why ‘chatbots,’ not one chatbot? Duolingo offers multiple chatbots because they decided to give their chatbots personalities and offers several types – Chef Robert, Renee the Driver, and Officer Ada.
Duolingo’s chatbots let you talk about whatever you like, and they also give you flexibility in your answers, something most language-learning software simply isn’t designed for. If you’re confused and don’t know how to answer, you can use the “help my reply” button to get a few suggested answers. For now, you can only talk with these chatbots via text, but over time, Duolingo plans to support spoken conversations as well.
PennyCat
There’s nothing more useful than keeping money in your pocket, is there? If you’ve heard that there are chatbots that have already helped people save more than 10 million dollars, it’s true. They do exist. PennyCat is one of them, and is the best AI chatbot for Messenger to help you find coupons and discounts in a snap.
This cat is you personal money saver, helping you save on tickets, delivery, flowers, and other stuff. PennyCat has single-handedly helped people save about $100,000 dollars to date. This AI-powered chatbot works in the U.S, Canada, the U.K, India, and many other countries, and accesses around 450,000 coupons and discounts from a wide variety of online stores.
PennyCat also has a number of other hooks to try and get you to stick around, including “penny cash” and Facebook Messenger games that you can play at the push of a button. To start saving with PennyCat, just type what you want and Penny will start looking for savings.
Mezi
Over the past few years, a large number of personal assistant apps have popped up all around the world. Most of them use artificial intelligence to try to to make people’s lives easier. The Mezi bot, founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneurs Swapnil Shinde and Shelah Shinde, is one of them. Though Mezi has plenty of competitors and runs only on iPhones or via SMS, but it has managed to become the leading AI-powered chatbot shopping app. It’s success is tied to its eagle-eyed focus on ecommerce.
Mezi is a chatbot that assists users with time-consuming errands. Mezi acts like a human and texts users in a natural way. Whenever you need to buy something, just send a message to Mezi and let her take care of all the research, present you with options, and help you place an order. Combining human expertise with AI, Mezi makes shopping as easy as asking a question.
Besides being a cool personal shopper, Meiz can also be a good travel guide. As a travel guide, Mezi can handle a variety of requests such as booking, rescheduling, and cancelling reservations. Mezi learns customer needs to be able to provide personalized recommendations in the near future. As Mezi learns from you, it can help you earn rewards points, get your preferred seats, and request hotel amenities such as parking, WiFi, pools and in-room breakfasts.
Wade&Wendy
Wade and Wendy, an AI-powered recruiting platform, was launched by Josh Brandoff, Adrian von der Osten, and Drew Austin in New York last summer. This platform is one of the most outstanding contributions to the recruitment field in the last few years. Wade and Wendy are two human-like intelligence (AI) chatbots, or assistants, who intend to make the process of hiring people easier and simultaneously more human.
Wade is your personal trusted AI career guide. Wade figures out your interests and experience to provide personalized career opportunities. Wendy joins teams on Slack as a recruiting assistant, helping recruiters source the right candidates and alleviating some of the recruiting pain points for hiring managers by helping them to intelligently identify talent for their open roles from a community-sourced applicant pool.
Mitsuku
At some point, everyone has felt lonely and wanted to talk to someone, only to find that everybody around them was busy. Now, when you need someone to talk to, your new virtual friend Mitsuku is ready to listen. Mitsuku claims to be an eighteen year old AI-powered chatbot who you can talk to 24/7. And she learns by experience, so the more you talk to her the smarter she becomes. To start talking to Mitsuku, just click on one of the options under her picture on the right or just click on the chat button in the menu bar.
The Mitsuku bot was created by Steve Worswick, who ten years ago launched one of the most popular free platforms for creating chatbots – Pandorabots. All of Worswick’s experience with chatbots finally led to the creation of Mitsuku. For now, Mitsuku is the most popular artificial intelligence chatbot running on Pandorabots. In 2013, Worswick entered Mitsuku in the Loebner Prize contest, an annual event where AI specialists from all around the world come together to compete with their bots. The goal is to design bots that can make people think they’re talking to a real person. Mitsuku won the 2013 award for the most humanlike AI chatbot.
Looking at the previous year’s achievements in AI chatbot development, we can say without a doubt that developing a chatbot is the right direction to go in for most businesses. AI chatbots will increase in popularity in 2017, especially now that they’ve proved themselves to be profitable for businesses. Moreover, the field of AI development is gaining momentum, and so we’re looking forward to meeting more human-like (and smarter) bots in the near future. Here at RubyGarage we’ll continue following the latest developments in this area to develop the best chatbots for our clients.
