Facebook's F8 will redefine Messenger with bots

Facebook could well bring chat bots to its popular Messenger service according to a report by The Independent. In fact, it has been suggested that chat bots could be part of a bot store that the social network giant could introduce the coming week around 12-13 April when the annual Facebook conference goes underway. The purpose of this move is to be able to do away with apps and websites for companies that sign up for the service. For instance, customer service agents could soon be replaced with bots using artificial intelligence. Coincidentally, Microsoft demoed very similar concepts at Build 2016 a couple of weeks ago. Soon, users would be able to interact with their favourite brand, place an order for their favourite product, and even send it for replacement without the need to interface with a human agent. The Independent report further adds that a programmed customer service representative could send automated responses to a customer during the product replacement process. However, what makes the service more interesting is that the conversation doesn’t have to limited to boring chats, but could take the form of notifications. For instance, if a particular product that a customer is looking for is no longer in stock, the brand could notify the user once stocks are replenished. Similar to Microsoft, Facebook intends to make this a platform for developers to engage with and build useful tools for brands to communicate with their audience.