Facebook F8 2017: Group Chat Bots For Messenger In The Works?

Facebook might announce a new group chat bot feature for Messenger at the company’s annual F8 conference in April, TechCrunch reported Wednesday. The new feature would keep users informed about real-time news related to topics such as sports, finance and politics.

The report adds that Facebook is working with top chatbot makers for the launch and might open up APIs to allow developers to build other group bots. The group chat bots would be a second coming for the company’s bot based features, since it previously launched a bot platform at F8 2016, but the feature did not take off at the time.

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The report blames poorly developed artificial intelligence for the failure of previous bots. David Marcus, Head of Facebook’s Messenger division, told TechCrunch at an event in September: “The problem was it got really overhyped, very, very quickly. The basic capabilities we provided at the time weren’t good enough to basically replace traditional app interfaces and experiences.”

This time, according to the report, Facebook has improved on the earlier model as there would be two major changes to how the bots function. The group bots would act as news tickers rather than trying to help create conversations as was the purpose of previous bots — they would actually be information bots rather chat bots.

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Also, the group bots will be automatically added to group chats — once one user adds the bot to a thread, all other people on the thread will be able to get the information, much like what happens on professional messaging applications such as Slack. Earlier, users had to type a bot’s name in the Messenger’s search box to chat with one, which would just be a one-on-one conversation.

The report doesn’t make it clear how exactly users would be able to find and add bots to conversations although it adds that Facebook could probably announce bot discovery options at F8 2017, which will take place on April 18-19 at McEnery Convention Center in San Jose.