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Skype is Getting Cortana and Crazy Bot Messaging (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: During its Build conference, Microsoft demoed how Skype users would be able to book trips, shop, and plan their schedule, just by chatting with Cortana. "Cortana is brokering the conversation with a third-party bot," says Lilian Rincon, Skype's program manager. Essentially, Skype will know which company or service you want to talk to, bring a new bot into your chat to help out, and then get rid of the bot when you're done. Video bots may also be in the works as Rincon mentioned, "We will also be bringing intelligence into real-time video."
The new features are very similar to Facebook's "Messenger Bot Store," which the company announced at F8. Facebook's AI-powered assistant, called M, would enable Messenger users to make purchases, restaurant reservations, and travel bookings within the messaging interface, similar to Cortana but with more human input.
I actually just went through this today. I have a trip I am going on for which my company forced me to go through a travel agency. This resulted in a 20 minute conversation with a travel agent to describe and book a flight plan that took me less than 30 seconds to do on Google Flights. All I wanted to do was click the "buy" button, but no, I had to engage in this mindless conversation.
Not all tasks need conversations. In fact, most tasks are much easier and simpler to do with a mouse or keyboard. The few tasks that do require conversations, are also the complicated requests typically require humans and no bot can handle them today.