Messenger bots, launched at F8, are lightweight apps with conversational capabilities that sit in the messaging app.
In most cases, the services leverage the Twitter use case: semi-public SMS-length comments with very little conversational threading but live search capabilities called track that allow group collaboration to be aggregated.
"Today, we are announcing we have signed an agreement to acquire Xoxco, a software product design and development studio known for its conversational AI and bot development capabilities," Lili Cheng, corporate VP for conversational AI at Microsoft wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition.
The company confirmed the acquisition in a press release that contains the following buzzwordy quote from CEO Zak Normandin: "This partnership advances our vision to build a frictionless conversational platform by expanding our technological capabilities as an organization".
After the latter's digital division was acquired by Big Blue, the pair this year launched "Watson Ads", using the artificial intelligence system's natural language-handling capabilities to power a conversational new ad format.
"Alpine's machine learning capabilities accelerate Headspace's efforts to bring new conversational experiences to market". .
To do so, Veveo has integrated voice and natural language capabilities for video search, discovery, and navigation through its SmartRelevance Conversational Platform.
The interactivity capabilities afforded by these avatars were able to simulate two-way conversational dialogue by allowing users to give input during a communication, usually via text, and then provide instantaneous (real-time) spoken or textual responses.
Once FriendFeed created a realtime conversational data type, the race was under way to codify Twitter and extend it before Twitter absorbed the capability.
Sarcastic, conversational, honest, subdued.
