Summary: This is the first in a series about Chatbots. In this first installment we cover the basics including their brief technological history, uses, basic design choices, and where deep learning comes into play. In subsequent articles we’ll describe in more detail about how they are actually programmed and best practice dos and don’ts.
According to Chatbot.org there are currently 1,331 active chatbots in the world. That’s a lot for a technology that didn’t even exist two or three years ago.
- 20% are in the US, 45% are in Western Europe and the UK, and about 1% are in China.
- They support input in 31 languages. (Note some chatbot development platforms support up to 50 languages.)
- The most popular consumer themes are: finance & legal 10%, and education learning & lookup 6%, among 27 distinct categories including erotic 1%.
- 96% support text recognition, 3% speech recognition, 1% gesture recognition.
