Facebook is testing a new reactions feature in Messenger, which would allow users to add reaction emojis next to text in conversations. Users would do this by clicking on a button next to text, which would bring up a series of reactions. The reactions are similar to the current six reaction buttons for posts, but also includes a thumbs down button 👎 (yep, dislike).

The feature also includes a reaction counter, which would list the number of reactions on any given line. The feature doesn’t appear for all users, but the company has conducted tests on small groups of users before rolling it out to the larger population. I hope this feature will also be accessible through Bots API, will be a great replacement of a custom implementation with quick reply buttons.

http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/5/14821874/facebook-testing-reactions-feature-messenger-dislike-button

Do you remember my post how it’s going with AI in Apple? Here is a new one from the same author (Steven Levy) called “Inside Facebook’s AI Machine”.

Facebook is relying a lot on AI. It cannot exist without AI today. Every time you use Facebook or Instagram or Messenger, you may not realize it, but your experiences are being powered by AI. Even Zuckerberg’s 5700-word manifesto invoked the words ‘artificial intelligence’ or ‘AI’ seven times.

If it’s too long for you to read - don’t skip, just add it to your Pocket to read later. By the way, thanks @flreln for this article.

https://backchannel.com/inside-facebooks-ai-machine-7a869b922ea7

About AI in Apple: https://news.1rj.ru/str/botcube/48

Do you remember that story about Amazon Echo and a murder case? If not - the link is below.

Finally, Amazon has agreed to hand over data from an Amazon Echo that may have been operating as an alleged murder took place, after the defendant consented.

A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39191056

More about the case is here: https://news.1rj.ru/str/botcube/62

This is an early stage of the moment we have all been waiting for: WhatsApp reportedly started testing system that would let businesses talk directly to WhatsApp users. Seems like we’ll see such a desired bot platform API inside WhatsApp soon (in half of year 😂). I’m happy because our clients have always asked us to build a bot inside WhatsApp but it wasn’t possible in a native way.

Also, it’s an important signal of how WhatsApp plans to make money from its massively popular service since it has not developed a business model in the three years since Facebook Inc bought it for a hefty $19 billion.

http://venturebeat.com/2017/03/08/whatsapp-reportedly-testing-business-chat-tools/

I’ve just finished reading a very long article about one interesting experiment which was done with a Kik messenger chatbot named Kokobot. But the main story here is not about chatbots at all, it’s about people.

Koko is ushering in a new era of emotional well-being, providing emotional support as a service to any product. With KokoBot, users have access to a peer-to-peer network that helps them deal with symptoms related to stress, anxiety and depression. For people who are suffering, knowing that others are in pain, and that they can do something about it, is one way of healing themselves.

I highly encourage you to find some time to read an article below about the story how chatbots can help people with mental diseases.

http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/2/14764620/koko-social-network-mental-health-depression-app-kik

Try KokoBot on Telegram: @thekokobot

Nowadays kids adore their new robot siblings which help them turn off the lights, answer homework questions and entertain friends at sleepover parties. While helping kids and bringing value to them these assistants can also be harmful in many ways.

Some parents think that Alexa tolerates poor manners. To ask her a question, all you need to do is say her name, followed by the query. No “please.” And no “thank you” before asking a follow-up.

Also, it creates patterns and reinforcement that so long as your diction is good, you can get what you want without niceties.

Parents have noticed that queries previously made to adults are shifting to assistants, particularly for homework — spelling words, simple math, historical facts. Kids will go to their parents less, with both sides losing out on timeworn interactions.

It’s a very hard question though to discuss in a couple of paragraphs, so I encourage you to read the article below to understand all the implications behind kids interacting with the robots.

https://goo.gl/4FWIEe

I think that those of you who use Facebook Messenger on a daily basis have probably noticed that not long time ago it was sufficiently redesigned to add more camera features upfront. And as I’ve noticed most of my friends are completely annoyed by this change. So, what’s the implication behind this? How Facebook Messenger transformed from a chat app to a chat camera? Here is a great article from TechCrunch explaining the historical part of this phenomenon.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/08/the-camera-is-the-keyboard/

It’s Sunday, so #botoftheweek is here, guys. Today we have a very interesting and useful one. How many times have you been suffering trying to come up with a new project name and then checking all the domains and social account availability? For me it was a real problem though.

So, here is a bot called Namely. It’s a Facebook Messenger bot to help you decide your next projects’ name. You send it a name proposal and then it checks all the domains and social accounts availability for this name. Sounds like a huge time saver, right? 🙏🏻

https://www.messenger.com/t/416101528740470

We have an article from a non-technical source today (Wall Street Journal) about AI. Basically it’s an interview with one of the most popular influencers in the world of AI nowadays - Andrew Ng. He is a chief scientist at Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc. and co-founder of Coursera. And yep, he’s also a teacher at the super popular “Machine Learning” course at Coursera. They talked about speech recognition, singularity, automated jobs and plenty other hot topics. The main idea of the discussion though is that the hype about artificial intelligence is real this time.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-artificial-intelligence-will-change-everything-1488856320

It’s always a pleasure for me to post here articles about Slack team and their updates. I think that’s because these guys are awesome and doing really well on constantly improving and engaging a communication inside teams.

And here is a new update - now they’ve improved a way we’re sharing and previewing links. Basically right now with a new SDK you can show some authenticated content at the link preview and also add some buttons to it to bring interactivity. More info is inside the article, these guys are rocking 🤘🏻

https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/all-will-be-revealed-ebcad7c531f0

Capital One has announced Eno - the first natural language SMS chatbot from a U.S. bank, allowing customers to ask questions using natural language. Customers can ask Eno questions about their checking and savings accounts using a text interface. Examples might include “What’s my balance?” or “How much credit do I have?” 🤑

The idea of this chatbot came up when the bank found that when it sent out automated fraud alerts through SMS, customers thought that the sender was human and started interacting with it.

This is remarkably different than other brands chatbots on platforms like Facebook Messenger and Skype. Capital One believed Facebook has too much access to peoples’ private information, any Facebook Page admin can view the personal banking information of customers.

https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/capital-one-natural-language-chatbot-eno/

Do you remember my long post about ads for voice assistants? According to the poll I’ve made - about 70% of this channel readers were against taking an ads-supported Google Home/Amazon Echo for free. But I have a very interesting piece of news for you: some Google Home owners reported hearing something extra when they asked for a summary of the day ahead from the smart speaker: an advertisement for the opening of Beauty and the Beast.

But Google denied that the audio snippet was actually an ad, initially providing this rather strange statement: “This isn't an ad; the beauty in the Assistant is that it invites our partners to be our guest and share their tales.”

So, while ads on connected speakers feel like a deal breaker right now, they’re probably going to become the norm pretty soon.

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/3/16/14948696/google-home-assistant-advertising-beauty-and-the-beast

It's Sunday, so it's time for our #botoftheweek nomination!

And today it goes to @meet bot by Google!. They've just released a new app called Hangouts Chat, basically it's just a new chat app on top of current Google infrastructure for business (which is actually pretty cool).

Straight to the point: on top of it they have a bot called @meet, that understands natural language and can make appointments right in the chat. So let's say you and your team are talking about a brainstorm session next week to get some shit done. Usually, everyone starts looking at their calendars trying to find good time for a meeting, and it's kinda suck. With this new bot, you can tag @meet right in the conversation, and the bot will look at everyone's schedule and pick the best time and arrange the meeting. Sounds extremely cool! 🤖 ❤️

http://www.inc.com/john-brandon/how-this-simple-little-bot-in-googles-new-slack-killer-will-change-your-work-lif.html

I’ve recently found some interesting statistics data about people using a bot. But it’s not just a simple bot, it’s a Hipster Cat Bot and it has recently surpassed 100 thousands users 😳

There is a couple of interesting metrics inside: from different time graphs showing how people chat to a bot (for example only a few people chat during work hours) to that fact that Telegram users don’t really use this bot, they are more into dogs 🐶

https://medium.com/@electrobabe/5-fun-facts-about-100-000-users-chatting-with-a-cat-bd767b9a4d16

By the way this bot was built using Microsoft Bot Framework. It’s interesting that I start seeing more and more bots been built using this tool, it makes me start thinking about giving it a try. Have you used Microsoft Bot Framework or BotKit? Any obstacles? I’m curious - tell me here please.

Surprising news - Andrew Ng, chief data scientist at Baidu, today announced that he will be leaving the company.

“Baidu’s AI is incredibly strong, and the team is stacked up and down with talent; I am confident AI at Baidu will continue to flourish,” Ng wrote in a Medium post. “After Baidu, I am excited to continue working toward the AI transformation of our society and the use of AI to make life better for everyone.”

It’s not clear who at Baidu will take Ng’s noscript of chief scientist.

http://venturebeat.com/2017/03/21/baidu-chief-scientist-andrew-ng-is-stepping-down-haifeng-wang-will-lead-expanded-ai-group/

Do you remember I shared an article about reactions in Messenger last week? Here's a huuuge update: they just released Message Reactions and Mentions for Messenger!

Now you can react to any message by pressing​ and holding​ any message, and then tapping to make your selection from the Facebook emojis. I suppose it's a new way to improve their ML and especially M.

More interesting feature is group mentions. Instead of simply seeing that someone responded in the conversation, users will receive a new kind of notification that lets them know they were called out specifically. Hoping that mentions offer a way to incorporate bots into group threads!
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/03/introducing-message-reactions-and-mentions-for-messenger/

Sunday evening is always a great time for 2 things: planning the next week and reading about the #botoftheweek nomination. We have a very controversial bot today. I can’t say that it’s useful at all. It can be even harmful for your time. But it’s a very loud case though. So, it’s a Kim Kardashian’s chatbot promoting her mobile game 🙈

https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/23/kim-kardashian-launches-a-facebook-messenger-bot-to-promote-her-mobile-game/

Hey, guys, do you remember the list of bot resources we’ve recently collected?

Finally, we've been hunted on Product Hunt today! Right now we really need your help to spread the word about it. 💪🏻

So, please, follow the link below, find 'awesome-bots' and click the “Upvote” button

Thanks in advance! ✋🏻

https://www.producthunt.com/topics/bots?order=by-date

A week ago Chris Messina had a webinar called "The future of messaging bots and chat for business". I really enjoyed watching the video noscript and I hope that it would be helpful for you too! Yesterday he wrote a great wrap-up with best thoughts and insights and I'm 100% sure it would help everyone to refresh their knowledge base and get some useful insights! 🤖 ❤️

Hint: at the end of the post you can find an example of best use case for group bots I've seen till the moment. 😉

https://medium.com/chris-messina/the-future-of-messaging-bots-and-chat-for-business-54b94380ffb7

Seems like a long-waited feature is finally coming to Facebook - group chatbots. Facebook will reveal at its F8 conference a new class of bots that work inside Messenger group chats 😍

I really like this update because from my perspective there is a plenty of cases where it can be useful. For example, a Messenger group of football fans could add a sports bot to their thread, where it could report score changes, big plays and other news from the game. An e-commerce group bot could keep a group of coworkers informed about the status of their lunch delivery, letting them know that the order is being prepared and when it arrives.

And the main point here - since these group bots won’t be the sole conversation partner, there will be less pressure on them to act human, and more opportunity for them to service a specific utility.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/29/facebook-group-bots/

Robots… Robots everywhere.

Pizza giant Domino’s has announced a pilot program in a couple of German and Dutch cities, where customers within a 1-mile radius of certain Domino’s stores will be greeted with a non-humanoid robot rather than a person on a bike 🤖

The main reason of such a drastic experiment can be explained by the quote of Domino’s CEO: “With our growth plans over the next five to 10 years, we simply won’t have enough delivery drivers if we do not look to add to our fleet through initiatives such as this.”

https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/29/dominos-taps-starship-technologies-to-deliver-pizzas-with-autonomous-ground-drones/