Chat UI

Popularly known as chatbots, a simplified version of "conversational robots," these chat interfaces use natural language processing so that the program communicates with humans through plain text sentences in regular language, thus adapting accordingly to the conversational paths. Based on artificial intelligence, this software is adaptable and responds according to the user's inputs.

Such applications have become popular over the past years with the incorporation of popular message apps, where brands and institutions can connect with consumers more efficiently. Native services in brands and governments' websites can also apply the same premise of a chatbot to automate consumer services and other processes that once needed a human employee to perform.

Conversational robots could provide an interface that is user-friendlier compared to the current customer services where employees are reactant to human feelings, such as anger, boredom, and sarcasm. Since chatbots could be integrated into any conversational platform, the expectation is to have such interfaces as a primary feature in companies that desire to talk to their consumers or employees more insightfully and efficiently. In the educational and training sectors, this technology enables better communication between mentors and students, employers and employees.

Even though its adoption is mainly as a customer-service tool, chatbots have not yet reached mainstream due to different perceptions of trust. This is impacted by the quality of its interpretation of requests and advice, its human-likeness, self-presentation, and professional appearance, but also by factors concerning the service context, specifically the brand of the chatbot host, and the perceived security and privacy in the chatbot.

Future Perspectives

With the help of specific writers and engineers who could improve the way these artificial intelligence programs work, not only could conversations become sharper, but also machine-learning algorithms could feed these chatbots to grow independently. However, the integration of these features into robots and androids could pose a future where society is populated by robots that converse the same way humans do in real-time, thus giving the Turing Test another layer of complexity.

Image generated by Envisioning using Midjourney