The Mad Botter launches 'Alice' AI bot to assist with productivity and collaboration
When you are working on a team -- whether large or small -- collaboration can be a huge pain point. Nowadays, there are more and more remote workers, meaning teammates aren't always in the same state or country, let alone the same office building. After all, there is talent all over the globe -- not just in a 30 mile radius surrounding your place of business. This is one of the reasons why chat solutions like Slack have gained in popularity.
Speaking from experience, many software solutions are quite deficient in maximizing productivity and collaboration. There are still many instances where employees duplicate work and find themselves working off of outdated document revisions. A new startup called "The Mad Botter" is hoping to change this with a new "Wonderland" themed artificial intelligence bot called "Alice." This isn't an entirely new platform, however, and that is a good thing. Instead, the bot ties into existing solutions, such as the aforementioned Slack, plus other services like Trello and GitHub.
What you need to know about chatbots
As consumers become bombarded with more and more advertising both online and in the real world, the challenge of directly appealing to customers is a challenge facing businesses both large and small.
Combining the intelligence of machine learning and AI systems with the personal touch of technology platforms such as instant messaging apps or mobile devices, chatbots could soon be the best way for businesses to directly reach out to their individual customers.
Facebook Messenger chatbots help companies boost sales
Chatbots on Facebook's Messenger have helped companies increase their sales more than expected, meaning the technology could soon become widespread.
The news was announced during Facebook's F8 keynote, with its VP of messaging products David Marcus discussing a number of big-name brands such as Sephora, SnapTravel and Tommy Hilfiger.
New solution prevents bots from accessing API servers
Bots are often the culprits behind web scraping, brute force attacks, online fraud, account hijacking, data theft, and more. Often these attacks are made through the API servers that power public-facing websites and mobile applications.
A new solution from bot detection specialist Distil Networks is aimed at protecting these servers by determining whether a human is using a verified browser or mobile device to gain access.
Top websites struggle to guard against sophisticated bot attacks
A report released today shows that, while an average of 16 percent of websites across all industries can thwart simple bot attacks, only five percent are able to properly protect against sophisticated attacks.
The study from bot detection specialist Distil Networks, in conjunction with the Online Trust Alliance (OTA), evaluated the top 1,000 websites in retail, banking, consumer services, government, news media, internet service providers and OTA members.
Intelligent chatbot helps boost endpoint security
It's vital to protect endpoints within the enterprise, but often the level of alerts generated by conventional solutions can prove overwhelming for security analysts.
Cyber security platform Endgame is introducing new features to simplify attack detection, threat hunting, and response, including the use of an intelligent chatbot.
Intelligent bot software can automate up to 80 percent of business processes
Bots are increasingly being used in the automation of business processes, but up to now their capabilities using rule-based Robotic Process Automation (RPA) have tended to be somewhat limited.
But now Automation Anywhere is launching what it calls IQ Bots, software bots capable of studying, learning and mimicking human behavior for intelligent process automation.
Customers prefer bots over humans for support
People are now more receptive of bots in customer support services, a new report by LivePerson has concluded. Consumers would rather talk to a bot than to a human, and usually rate the interaction with the digital helpers as a great one.
Even though the general opinion of bots was that they were implemented by companies to cut costs, it is now being realized that it was also (or even more) about the speed of service.
New free plugin filters bot data from Google Analytics
Google's own bot filtering catches only a small percentage of the bot traffic that hits most sites, leading to traffic analysis data being skewed.
Bot detection specialist Distil Networks is launching a free tool designed to remove the bad data created by bots.
What do we know about bad bots?
In 2016, approximately 185 million new Internet users went online, with the vast majority of these coming from nations like India. This represents a huge increase in the market. However, while the Internet population continues to grow, there has also been an increase in bots as well. The word "bot" covers a wide variety of automated programs: while some source data for search engines and help people match their queries with the most appropriate websites, others are not so helpful.
In the past year, bad bots accounted for 19.9 percent of all website traffic -- a 6.98 percent increase over the same time in 2015. Bad bots interact with applications in the same way a legitimate user would, making them harder to prevent. However, the results are harmful: for example, bad bots can take data from sites without permission while others undertake criminal activities such as ad fraud and account theft.
Spotify bot for Facebook Messenger lets you share music and listen to mood-based playlists
At Facebook's F8 conference yesterday, much of the attention was focused on virtual reality, augmented reality -- anything that breaks out of vanilla reality. But there were other things of arguably greater interest, and for music fans there was news of the Spotify bot for Facebook Messenger.
Facebook has been throwing a lot at bots recently, and it's little surprise that big names like Spotify are getting in on the action. For the music streaming service, the bot serves a dual purpose: giving useful functionality to Messenger users, while simultaneously pushing people into taking up a subscription.
Are bots set to replace apps for mobile commerce?
As the world has moved more towards using mobile platforms for eCommerce and accessing the web, many companies have been looking to shift away from apps towards more responsive technology delivered by bots.
But is this model the future? Mobile development company ROKO Labs has produced an infographic looking at the pros and cons of both approaches.
Are bot-on-bot battles holding the IoT back?
We know by now that smart home devices have the ability to make our lives more convenient. Moving beyond devices, some IoT providers are deploying bots, which use artificial intelligence to create hyper-personalized services that will take consumer convenience to a whole new level.
Bots are a relatively new term for most, but this past year consumers have become more familiar with bots thanks mostly to conversations around chatbots. Recently, Wikipedia’s content-editing bots made the news too when Oxford researchers found that they were contradicting edits they were making to articles on the website. The bot-on-bot fights went unnoticed because our knowledge and understanding of how bots interact with one another is limited. As bots began to find their way into other services, we’ll see this problem span beyond Wikipedia, proving an enormous need to understand their interactions.
Microsoft launches English-speaking chatbot in India
Microsoft has released yet another chatbot, and this one is aimed specifically at the Indian market. Named Ruuh, the chatbot is said to enjoy chatting about Bollywood, music, humor, travel and browsing the net.
It is available only in India and only in English, at least for now. It was launched on February 7, with Microsoft filing for a trademark on March 15.
Consumers are ready for chatbots but companies aren't using them
The majority of consumers are comfortable talking with a chatbot yet only a fraction have engaged with one, according to a new report.
The study by mobile engagement specialist Vibes shows that over 60 percent of consumers would feel comfortable talking with a chatbot, yet only 22 percent have actually done so.
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