A year ago, I made a travel chatbot called Taylor. It uses data from Nomad List to give you recommendations on where to go and also tells you where you can work and sleep.
I launched it to Product Hunt and it did pretty well. Thousands of people have since used it.
I used stock photos to add a human persona behind the text-only chat bot.
@KateKendall made a good point how most chat bots have female names:
Please stop branding artificial intelligence companies with female names. Especially the assistant-style ones.
— Kate Kendall (@KateKendall) July 17, 2015
Mine was a unisex name (Taylor), but the original persona behind it was still a female:
I listened and added two other personas:
New users of Taylor bot were randomized and were sent to one of the three personas.
@KateKendall Hey Kate, I've listened to this and updated http://t.co/K1rkZCxgFb now and made it unisex (see switch at top right)
— levels (@levelsio) August 24, 2015
Now, here it comes. Taylor has a feedback option:
It’s used to give feedback about how the bot is doing its job.
It usually goes fine:
Here too:
The Asian female though:
I don’t want to be a white knight, but it’s hard as a guy to realize what women have to hear on a daily basis.
And, well….female chatbots too.
P.S. I just wrote a book on bootstrapping indie startups called MAKE. And I'm now on Twitter too if you'd like to follow more of my adventures. I don't use email so tweet me your questions.