Microsoft has additional to the number of chat bots available for users of Skype, announcing automated AI assistants for holiday price comparison sites Skyscanner and Hipmunk, ticket store Stubhub, and programmable messaging service IFTTT. Also between the five assistants announced this week is Spock Bot, which Microsoft says “provides info on the ways of Vulcan logic.”
The Skyscanner and Hipmunk apps will dribble out flight and travel propositions based on preferences like location and date, but it’s the IFTTT bot that might be the most useful, providing users with notices from their connected home devices, social media services, or whatever else they choose to set up. Users can call on bots in chats with real humans, as the Skyscanner demo video shows, allowing them to see relevant search results in the same window as their previous chat.
The new Skype bots joining existing assistants for services like Bing and Getty Images as Microsoft continues to bet heavily on AI. The company presented off the work it had been putting into creating “conversation as a platform.
