Toward truly personal chatbots
Florian Daniel, Maristella Matera, Vittorio Zaccaria, Alessandro Dell'Orto · 2018
Chatbots, i.e., conversational software agents able to interact with users via instant messaging channels like Messenger, WhatsApp or SMS, have the power to substantively simplify human-computer interaction thanks to their natural language paradigm. While this certainly helps to lower barriers, state-of-the-art chatbots prevalently provide access to generic, non-personalized features with relatively little usefulness. This may hinder adoption. To provide users with real value, we envision a kind of chatbot that is personal and helpful by providing services that are chosen and configured by the users themselves, for themselves. As the development of a one-size-fits-all, yet flexible and customizable bot is hard, if not impossible, we discuss requirements and design options that directly put the user into control of their own personal bot.