Introduction to Chatbot AI Applications

Artificial intelligence (AI)Artificial Intelligence (AI) applicationsChatbot are expected to revolutionise the traditional marketingMarketing space, tremendously changing business, and social life. ChatbotsChatbot as one of these applications are forecasted to generate significant profit by substituting the manpower and thus are being increasingly implemented to speed up various business operations, to facilitate service provided, sales activities, and processes. Despite the recognised benefits and market profit, consumer resistance toward AIArtificial Intelligence (AI) systems questions the ability of chatbotsChatbot to justify the term intelligence. This is a challenging question inviting further investigation. The current chapter embraces this challenge providing an overview of how AI, and in particular chatbotsChatbot change the marketingMarketing landscape. Defining the state of the art, we look at parameters characterising chatbotChatbot intelligence and efficiency. We zoom-in into potential factors determining consumers resistance toward chatbotsChatbot currently available on the market. Our investigation reports an emergent demand to understand, create, and communicate in the way humans do, i.e., consumers still prefer a human agent front of chatbotsChatbot. Such outcome is a warning call for human–computer interaction (HCI) research and UserUser experienceExperience (UX)User Experience (UX) design to join efforts with psychology, consumer, and marketingMarketing expertise, in order to design and implement AIArtificial Intelligence (AI) systems going beyond algorithmic explanation. Efficient AI systems are needed that appropriately meet the userUser request for high-qualityQuality chatbotsChatbot satisfying their demand for enjoyable and functional interaction, offering an enhanced consumer journey.